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Template:PD

• Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Template:PD

TTN, again.

{{resolved|one week block, see WP:AE of today too}}

AE link -- [1]. — Rlevse • Talk • 11:56, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

(If it matters any, make note that I have a long-standing account but I prefer to not to use it on Talk pages and the like.)

Even though TTN left for a while due to getting put on probation, he's recently returned with the same "holy cause" attitude he's had before. Despite being barred from making any redirect or merge-related edits, TTN's gone on a tagging and "trimming" adventure in the last few days, and while he's as annoying and forceful as ever that isn't the problem I'm bringing up. As seen here he's also getting other users to do his abrupt redirections and merges for him and from the way it sounds, as soon as his probation's up he's going to be pulling the exact same actions at the same pace that got him in trouble in the first place. It's really maddening, and I'm not sure anything can be done about him. - 4.156.24.213 (talk) 04:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Notified both editors. Is there any particular edit you have a problem with? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I looked into this and object to this sort of thing. Its evading the Arbcom sanctions by asking other users, on and off wiki to do things he is prohibited from doing. MBisanz ^talk 05:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Why? The problem was how he was doing it, not what he was doing. If an editor chooses to behave in the manner that TTN was censured for, then that is their choice, and appropriate action will be taken. Performing/requesting redirects/merges is a regular editor activity. seresin ( ¡? ) 05:13, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I gave TTN an open offer to do this myself, and I stand by it. The rationale is simple, a user, such as myself, would evaluate his request, and if it doesn't seem valid, we don't do anything. If it is valid, it doesn't matter who suggested it. This is no different from TTN making the same exact suggestion on the talk page, which he is allowed to do. Unless we have a problem with the judgement of the user he's asking, there isn't an issue here. -- Ned Scott 05:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

And to give further context, this is a user that was already considering this. TTN and the user were discussing the matter, and TTN said "Per the arbcom case, I can't even place merge tags until like August or September, so it would have to be you. I'm in no rush, so you can take whichever course of action you wish to take. " In other words, "if you want to merge them, you'll have to be the one to add the tags because I'm not allowed to". I don't see anything wrong with that. -- Ned Scott 05:15, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

To give further context, yes the wording is neutral but TTN knows and you know how you'd interpret such a 'neutral' request. All this does is reinforce the view that TTN still thinks he has done nothing wrong at all and is merely sitting this out until starting again. The post could be considered bordering on evasion of an arbcom restriction given the context and people involved and as such should be placed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Did you really think that the outcome of the Arbcom case would be that every bad article would suddenly become immortal? TTN is far from the only person that believes that TTN did little to nothing wrong, and that means that there is still going to be a drive to remove these things. I don't see anything here that violates his Arbcom restrictions.Kww (talk) 06:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

To quote TTN: "You could just try redirecting it, and if it's only one or two anons reverting without summaries, it would just be fine to revert and ignore them. If any of them become vocal or an actual user jumps in, then some other method would probably have to be used, though." Fun little game I guess. ArbCom here we come. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh gosh, and here's another friendly request...Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't this really belong at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement again (yes, I'm aware that one was just closed 24 hours ago). I'll informed the user who closed that one how they feel. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:31, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Sigh, I really don't want to see Episodes and Characters 3, but if they do start proxying for him due to his "banned" status, I don't see any other option. Can someone please make the drama go away? Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 08:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I have undone sguerka's redirect without discussion of Meowth per [2] Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 07:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, how petty can you people be? It should be obvious that these are requests and suggestions. I haven't ask "Hey, can you go tag all these articles?" or "Can you go put all of these up for deletion?" I have told one person that an article would be better off merged, asked someone to finish a forgotten merger that they agree on already, told one person that they would have to set something up themselves, and asked some one, at their own discretion, to re-redirect some articles (out of over 150 for reference) that had already been through some sort of discussion. There is nothing malicious in anyone's actions besides the people complaining. TTN (talk) 08:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

You're under sanction, banned from redirecting articles, suggesting that others do the work you are unable to do per the arbcom sanction is attempting to circumvent the ban you are under.... It isn't pettiness, it is the conditions you found yourself under due to the problematic behavior you undertook even after being chastised by the arbcom the first time around. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 08:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see what TTN has done wrong. He's following the Arbcom ruling, and making editing suggestions. TTN has every right to engage in talk page discussions. He is not a banned user, and to describe him as such in order to justify blind reverting is disingenuous at best. The Arbcom ruling didn't say "any edits where TTN was involved in the discussion can be reverted on sight". Neıl ☎ 09:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Neil here. Especially since Sguereka would've done it without TTN. Sceptre ^(talk) 10:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

This argument does not hold any water. Sguereka had not re-redirected these articles until he was asked to do so as a proxy of TTN today. Perhap TTN isn't officially banned, but he is in spirit. If he was to do this sort of redirection, he'd have been treated in the very same way a banned user would be if that user was circumventing his ban. Arguing the semantics of his restriction seems somewhat silly, but I will not revert your reversion at this time. (No use fanning the fire of this continuing drama, afterall.) Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 10:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Again, TTN is not banned officially, nor banned in spirit. This is not an issue of semantics; it's very important to be clear on this, as "banned" has connotations and implications that do not apply to TTN. He is not banned, he is restricted from merging/redirecting/deleting episode articles. He has not even edited episode articles. Nor has he requested merges, deletions, or redirections. This thread has, therefore, very little purpose other than to air old grievances. Neıl ☎ 11:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have serious qualms about the Meowth redirect, notably the fact that it was opposed on the talk page for anyone that looked. I too don't agree one bit with TTN's actions: effectively he can puppeteer users to do what he's banned from and that should be "okay"? You'd be better off just cutting out the middle man and letting him do it himself if you're going to go that route. And last I checked that wasn't the option on the table. A comparison would be an AFD discussion: we aren't allowed to go to users and say "Hey, this article is under fire could you please post a keep vote if you think it should stay?" That violates a blatant rule and we all know it. So how is this any different?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 11:33, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Do I need to quote the ArbCom statement? The ruling states he cannot merge/redirect or delete articles relating to TV shows or characters. It also states he may not request any of the preceding. He has done none of these things. However, the ruling states "[TTN] is free to contribute on the talk pages or to comment on any AfD, RfD, DRV, or similar discussion initiated by another editor, as appropriate." Neıl ☎ 12:22, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you missed his request to sgeureka to re-redirect a number of character articles then, Neil, because he did precisely what you say he didn't. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 12:33, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Kyaa, I did indeed miss that ([3]) - this is expressly against the Arbcom ruling (my apologies). The appropriate place for this to be reported is Arbcom enforcement, that way. I will add a comment to the thread you have already started there. Neıl ☎ 13:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

At the very least I can point out the Meowth redirect ended up violating what you cited Neil, given that the article covers in part the character's anime counterpart, meaning it affected an article on a TV character.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 12:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Sguereka had not re-redirected these articles until he was asked to do so as a proxy of TTN today. Right as a factual statement, totally wrong in the implication (and who would know this better than I am). While I would not have re-directed (most of) these articles that day, I redirect these types of articles on other days in a similar manner (as can be seen from my contributions) while no-one makes a big deal out of it. And why would they? It would be a hard strain on wiki procedure to open a new merge debate whenever a proper-enough merge&redirect is challenged by newbies or IPs without a comment, and I bet this exact loophole that got TTN into trouble in the first place will be filled eventually as well. – sgeureka ^t•c 13:34, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

There is no distinction between anonymous IP users and those who login and suggesting that there should be special rules when an IP is the wikipedian who challenges you strikes badly against the spirit of Wikipedia, imho. As to your comment about newbies... One would suggest you read up on BITE.... Suggesting that newbies and IPs should be treated as second class wikipedians is troubling. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 13:40, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I was a fanboy newbie once who was immediately bitten with an AfD, and I still only really learned the significance of WP:FICT (and WP:NOT#PLOT, WP:WAF, ...) after approximately four months of being an active wikipedian. I therefore consider it very unlikely that an IP or a newbie account who doesn't even use edit summaries, would know today's minimum requirements for fiction articles. And that doesn't even account for newly created disruptive sock puppets, although that would be the worst case scenario, so let's not go there. We're all here to at least maintain the quality we have already achieved, not twiddle our thumbs while some fanboy newbies (in good-faith or not) recreate articles that were considered bad the first time around. – sgeureka ^t•c 21:54, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

As Seresin hinted above, anyone continuously editing in the same manner as TTN should probably sanctioned in the same manner as TTN. Regardless, Meowth, being one of the main characters (and having a speaking role) in the cartoon series, is far from being an obvious merge candidate (regardless of how one feels about the other 400-odd pokémon). — CharlotteWebb 13:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Clarifications_and_motions ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Just a question, should I have posted that initially to AE rather than clarification? I am still kinda confused. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 15:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Just as a note, there have been two related threads at AE: TTN and notability tagging? and And so it begins again. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 16:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

To establish context, I had already wanted to merge this article quite a time ago. TTN's message was merely a reminder about the issue which I had forgotten about. Suggestions of puppeteering are false considering I have acted on my own accord and have decided what I plan to do, which is to raise discussion on the talk page and subsequently merge if there are no objections. So, in all honesty, I don't see anything sinister with what's happened. Thanks. Ashnard _Talk ^Contribs 16:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

People who edit in a manner identical to sanctioned users will themselves be eventually sanctioned. That is what we see is happening. I want to say "get a clue" but experience has thought me that wont happen. -- Cat ^chi? 18:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

...What? If you have some agenda, then don't take it out on me. I will propose a merge, and will wait for discussion, which is the standard for any merger. Don't make such claims. Check my contributions and learn your mistake. Ashnard _Talk ^Contribs 19:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about you or anybody specific. Mine was a mere general statement. However your ears seem clogged to my words. -- Cat ^chi? 09:11, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if I misinterpreted "That is what we see is happening. I want to say "get a clue" but" on a topic based on a conversation involving myself as an attack at me. How stupid of me<_<. Ashnard _Talk ^Contribs 08:00, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Block

I'm rather uneasy about him being blocked: specifically, the reason why. While I understand he is restricted under E&C2, it's a stretch to apply said restriction to [4] and [5]. A better blocking reason would be for him requesting sguereka to redirect Meowth, but still, the current reason is very thin. Sceptre ^(talk) 13:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

See his talk page too. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Definitely the right call in this situation. ArbCom's decisions was clearly being violated. Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 16:36, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I too have to echo the concerns that trimming an existing list of characters is the same as merge/deletion that C&E2 warns against. I did note that I felt tagging articles for notability may be considered broadly as the same previously at the ArbCom enforcement. However, these actions and the block, potentially, if TTN is unblocked and removes, say, one minor character out of a list or even one sentence about that character, someone's going to report him here again and lead down a slippery slope. I think this action should only be done if he engages in revert editing warring; if he, in good faith, tries to trim down an existing list of characters once, is reverted, then engages in discussion about it before other edits, that's perfectly in line with actions that we'd expect of any editor, that is, the lessons learned from the ArbCom case. If he continues to revert without discussion, then a block is fully justified. I just want to make sure that those that are monitoring and blocking him that there are a lot of people with TTN chips on their shoulders and may be able to push any block onto him for small well-meaning edits, based on the fact this block went through. (On the other hand, if there's collusion to enlist others to do exactly the same that TTN wanted to do by the same means as suggested above, that's very different) --MASEM 14:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I think a request for clarification should have been made before the block. TTN is only doing things when be honestly believes he's allowed to do them. A clarification would have stopped the disputed edits without the need for a block. -- Ned Scott 10:32, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:Do not move to Commons

Many images use this template which is a problem because per 17 USC 104(c) and 17 USC 104A USA did NOT agree with Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works's article 7.8 (Rule of the shorter term).

In other words media that are free inside the US but not free outside of the US are in fact not really free inside the US per 17 USC 104(c) and 17 USC 104A.

We should sort this mess out. Commons incompatible "free" images should be unwelcomed to English wikipedia for not being free enough.

-- Cat ^chi? 15:44, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps something that the foundation lawyers can sort out? I don't know if this is something a layman can determine with certainty. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not want to run to foundation lawyers first thing every time... -- Cat ^chi? 15:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Making policy decisions based on non-lawyers' interpretation of laws is not a good idea. Mr.Z-man 17:59, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I am not interpreting the law. I am quoting something well known and in common practice. Such images for example are deleted in commons. -- Cat ^chi? 18:32, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I am sure if there is a need, then somebody will. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

There are other license templates that fall into this category...{{PD-US-1923-abroad}} and {{PD-US-1996}} come to mind. Probably worth raising at Wikipedia:Copyright. Kelly ^hi! 18:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I was hoping a general discussion on this noticeboard since project talk pages do not get the necesary attention. -- Cat ^chi? 18:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I think you're misinterpreting things. This template would be appropriate and correct for a work from a life + 100 country -- in the US, the work would only be copyrighted for life + 70. Likewise, it would be appropriate for works like Peter Pan or the King James Bible: they're under perpetual copyright in the UK, but not in the US. The US did not adopt the rule of the shorter term, but to my knowledge, it did not adopt the rule of the longer term, either. --Carnildo (talk) 19:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Unless you adopt the rule of the shorter term by default you are adopting the rule of the longer term... You are missing the entire point... -- Cat ^chi? 09:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

There are three options here, not two.

1. The rule of the shorter term: if the copyright in the country of first publication is shorter, use it. A bunch of countries adopted this
2. The rule of the longer term: if the copyright in the country of first publication is longer, use it. I don't know of any country that's done this.
3. Apply your own copyright terms, regardless of the term in the country of first publication. To the best of my knowlege, this is what the US has done.

--Carnildo (talk) 18:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Edit point alpha

• Law isn't a matter of opinion. There are many (far more than three) practices conducted by signatories of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Countries need to ratify each individual article or section in their own laws as the international treaty by itself is meaningless. Not every country chose to ratify "article 7.8" of the Berne Convention for example. In addition Berne sets the minimum amount of protection. Countries may choose to be more restrictive. Berne for example suggests authors life +50 years but US chose to be more restrictive with authors live +70 years. Because the servers are inside the US, only the US laws are binding. Foreign laws are only binding per US law stating that it is.

---

“ § 104—Subject Matter of Copyright: National Origin

(a) UNPUBLISHED WORKS.—The works specified by sections 102 and 103, while unpublished, are subject to protection under this title without regard to the nationality or domicile of the author.
[...]
(c) EFFECT OF BERNE CONVENTION. No right or interest in a work eligible for protection under this title may be claimed by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. Any rights in a work eligible for protection under this title that derive from this title, other Federal or State statutes, or the common law, shall not be expanded or reduced by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto.

”

---

• 17 USC 104 (above) basically talks about how laws of other signatories of Berne Convention is binding in the US even if the work is not published. 17 USC 104 and particularly 17 USC 104A extends the copyright protection beyond Berne to include non-signatories of Berne such as WTO members and etc. There even is executive privilege over the matter.

---

“ § 104A—Copyright in restored works

(a) Automatic Protection and Term

(1) Term.—

(A) Copyright subsists, in accordance with this section, in restored works, and vests automatically on the date of restoration.

(B) Any work in which copyright is restored under this section shall subsist for the remainder of the term of copyright that the work would have otherwise been granted in the United States if the work never entered the public domain in the United States.

(2) Exception.—Any work in which the copyright was ever owned or administered by the Alien Property Custodian and in which the restored copyright would be owned by a government or instrumentality thereof, is not a restored work.

(b) Ownership of Restored Copyright

A restored work vests initially in the author or initial rightholder of the work as determined by the law of the source country of the work.

”

---

• 104A's a-1-b talks about protection unless the work has entered the public domain in the US at some point for whatever the reason. This addresses templates like {{PD-US}}, {{PD-US-1996}} and etc where works made/published in the US somehow become PD. Once a US work becomes PD inside the US, it stays PD forever at least within the US. This also means even if a work becomes PD in the country of origin the "author's life +70 years" may still apply (rule of the long term for you).
• 104A's b explicitly states that the laws of the works origin applies. Fortunately for most countries copyright expires within 70 pma, some as low as 50 pma or even 25 pma. As you can see on the grand list for some countries the copyright term exceeds +70 pmas. Per 104A's b if it is copyrighted in the country of origin it stays copyrighted within the US.
• Tying the two items above together... 104A's a-1-b explicitly states "if the work never entered the public domain in the United States" meaning US law makes no guarantee weather or not the work stays within PD if it did not entered PD within the US. This is 70 pma (post mortem auctoris) rule also per 104A's b the laws of the country of origin apply. Therefore a work may stay copyrighted until it is both PD in the country of origin and for some reason it became PD as per US laws as well. US laws explicitly give priority to the laws of the country of origin.
• On wikipedia we prefer to play it safe per past experience. Unless a works PD'ness is guaranteed by the US law, we treated as if it were copyrighted even if the work became PD in the country of origin. We made this mistake with Template:PD-Soviet. PD-Soviet was based on the fact that "all works published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973, were not protected by International Copyright Conventions" which was fine until Russia passed laws renewing copyright of PD-Soviet works. They can do that. Had they renewed after the US 70pma, then it would be a different story but even then it is an unnecesary gray area.
• I do not believe {{PD-US-1923-abroad}} has any legal basis. Or at least the template doesn't link to it. It appears to be wishful thinking at best as is but works published before 1923 are typically safe as in most cases the copyright has already expired and such images should be marked with {{PD-old}} instead.

Is it more clear now? (Wikipedia:Non-US copyrights#Dates of restoration and terms of protection answers all three point of yours.)

-- Cat ^chi? 20:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Copyright duration is determined by Chapter 3, not Chapter 1. --Carnildo (talk) 02:03, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Please quote the specific legal text you are referring to. -- Cat ^chi? 09:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

17 USC 302 and 17USC 303:

“ Copyright in a work created on or after January 1, 1978...endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author's death. [...] Copyright in a work created before January 1, 1978, but not theretofore in the public domain or copyrighted, subsists from January 1, 1978, and endures for the term provided by section 302. ”

17 USC 104(c) may also be of interest:

“ No right or interest in a work eligible for protection under this title may be claimed by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. Any rights in a work eligible for protection under this title that derive from this title, other Federal or State statutes, or the common law, shall not be expanded or reduced by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto ”

as may 17 USC 301(a):

“ On and after January 1, 1978, all legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright as specified by section 106 in works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression and come within the subject matter of copyright as specified by sections 102 and 103, whether created before or after that date and whether published or unpublished, are governed exclusively by this title. Thereafter, no person is entitled to any such right or equivalent right in any such work under the common law or statutes of any State. ”

In short, the only thing that determines the term of copyright in the US is 17 USC 302 and 17 USC 303.

--Carnildo (talk) 19:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I am {{cquote}}'ing your post so I can follow it more easily. I hope you do not mind.

You are omitting an important detail. These laws only apply to images originally created inside the US. Neither Peter Pan nor King James Bible are such works. In addition we are concerning ourselves with media (images, sound files, video files) and not written works, that'd be wikisource or wikibooks.

Media originally created outside the US will be under the jurisdiction of non-US law ("law of the source country of the work") per 104A's b. Are we in a disagreement with this?

Media originally created in the US will be under the jurisdiction of US laws per Berne Convention and other treaties. Right? There is no reason why such free images shouldn't be uploaded/moved to commons. Am I missing something?

-- Cat ^chi? 16:36, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

You're missing the point of 17 USC 104A entirely: it covers works that were out of copyright in the US on January 1, 1996, because they did not comply with US formalities, but were copyrighted in their country of origin: see 17 USC 104A(h)(6). It restores copyright to such works as if they had never been out of copyright, giving them the same protection as works first published in the US (17 USC 104A(a)). It says absolutely nothing about applying foreign law in the US. --Carnildo (talk) 19:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Something copyrighted in a foreign country per that countries copyright law is copyrighted in the US. We are talking about the same thing here. -- Cat ^chi? 22:26, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes and no. Something published in a foreign country that is eligible for copyright in that country also gets a copyright in the US. However, the duration of the copyright in the US is determined by US law (17 USC 302 and 303), not by the home country's law. --Carnildo (talk) 22:34, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Why the hell do we give a flip about the UK or EU laws when the server is in the US? Also, I take issue with your misappropriation of the the word "free." This is a blatant attempt to restrict freedom not expand it, so stop hiding behind euphemisms. It is bad enough our biographies pretty much suck now with those rediculous "missing person" boxes, without more perfectly good pictures being deleted to prove a point. Also, there are any number of reason for not hosting on commons, such as pictures that don't belong there because they are userspace stuff. Stop creating solutions in search of problems which don't exist. If you find this so objectionable, then maybe the time has come to fork into en-US and en-GB. --Dragon695 (talk) 23:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot reverting YouTube video links on Durham Miners' Gala

Resolved

 – XLinkBot is functioning properly, adding lots of YouTube links is discouraged and all is well in the world--Hu12 (talk) 09:54, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

User:XLinkBot has been reverting YouTube videos showing the Durham Miners' Gala (see here). The bot seems to go through taking out anything with a YouTube link, even though the videos are not banned outright. I can't see that it cotnravines any copyright having the videos there. It simply highlights the spirit of the event nicely: it's so much more enriching if people can see what it is like. I'm really upset that this stupid bot is removing these videos. Can somebody take a look at this? 88.107.110.247 (talk) 20:55, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I've taken a look at the list of sites it removes, and youtube is on it. I can't imagine youtube having much encyclopediodic value, but I suppose it does help from time to time. Oh and btw, try not to describe things as stupid ;-)--TrueWikimedian (talk) 21:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Okies, so can someone edit the bot? Clearly removing anything ith a YoutTube link is useful at getting rid of most spam, but it's still throwing out good stuff. It's a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because the links do not contravene any Wikipedia policy (as far as I can see), surely it is the bot who is violating policy by remoiving such links. Thus, its reverts are wrong, and it should therefore be immediately be deactivated until the owner (or someone else) can sort it out. 88.107.110.247 (talk) 21:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the vast majority of the youtube links that are added to Wikipedia do indeed tend to be copyright violation or inappropriate, so this is more of a case of throwing your change away with your meal. Especially since it's programmed to not perform the reversion more than once per page per user. I've found that the bot's merits outweigh its shortcomings, at least in my experience as a link patroller. Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 21:33, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, that's not the point. A criminal can break the law, yet then do a thousand good deads before getting caught, but they still broke the law. What the bot does well does not excuse what it does not. That it removes a lot of spam does not then make it ok to remove legitimate links. That is the point. 88.107.110.247 (talk) 21:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

88.107, your analogy isn't valid; for starters, breaking the law usually requires intent. This would mean that the bot's programmer intentionally made it remove links that he somehow knew in advance wouldn't violate the link guidelines. This'd be more like negligence, and a charge of negligence can indeed be dropped if it's shown that reasonable care was taken. And it has. It's unreasonable to expect any sort of spam-removing bot to have a 0% false positive rate. It's more like a person who normally does really well at their job, but occasionally makes a mistake. You're not going to fire this person because you know nobody can be perfect, and the mistakes they do occasionally make are ones that are easy to fix. Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 21:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

No it's not - negliance isn't acceptable once it is found. When it is spotted, it should be immediately corrected. We cannot say it is ok for the bot to revert legitimate positings because most of the time it gets it right. Granted it was not the creator's intention, but now we know it is reverting legitimate posts, it has to be changed to ensure it is not doing this. 88.107.110.247 (talk) 22:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Assuming the bot works as advertised, it only reverts the edits that (a) add links to sites that are on its revert list (b) made by editors whose accounts are less than 7 days old. Not a bad set up, IMHO. --ElKevbo (talk) 21:35, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

And "for some values of legitimate" - the collection of links in question smell strongly of processed meat products. Guy (Help!) 21:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I find it upsetting to see something writing "I can't imagine youtube having much encyclopediodic value," as if that matters. What is TYPICAL of youtube may have no encyclopedic value, but what is TYPICAL is NEVER the point. The point is whether the one link being added or deleted has encyclopedic value. Just because 99.999% of everything written is crap is no reason to abolish writing if the other small fraction of it is of great value. Same thing with youtube or anything else. Wikipedia relies heavily on that fact. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

My point exactly :) 88.107.110.247 (talk) 22:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

However, when 99.9% of the links added are to 'typical' unencyclopedic youtube stuff, the minor .1% that is encyclopedic but is reverted anyway is an acceptable price. It's never the case that a youtube link, or any other link for that matter, is so critical to an article that it would require dismantling the quite useful XLinkBot. To reverse my earlier job analogy, if an employee is a lazy slacker 99% of the time, and the other 1%, he's only maybe slightly above-average, would you fire him? Of course you would; the 1% of above-average productivity isn't worth the 99% of below-average. Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 22:11, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

No, but if the hispanic population had a lower literacy rate than the white population, and you had a white and hispanic man apply for a job, you would not use those statistics to choose the white man. That is what the bot is doing. It is a really sad day when you start to say that censoring legimate links "is an acceptable price". I do not know a great deal about WIki, but I am sure that must go against some key principle, somewhere. I can't believe there are people like this who run Wikipedia :( 88.107.110.247 (talk) 22:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The fundamental problem here is that your analogy (and mine, for that matter), involve a human performing the decision. XLinkBot is, obviously, a bot. It does not possess artificial intelligence, and is thus not able to test a link on its own. And it's not like you're forever denied of the right; just register an account and wait 7 days (I think that's the bot's autoconfirm period). As far as I know, there's no such thing as a white-ification procedure. Being Hispanic is part of one's identity; being an anonymous editor is not. Nor is it your fundamental right to add a link to an article. Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 22:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot 1 spam 0 --Hu12 (talk) 22:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

(New section) Ultimately, Wikipedia has these bot requirements. I have left a message on the talk page of the bot, so therefore in time I expect the creator to be aware of the issue of removing legitimate links. If the bot is not changed, the creator of the bot would be in violation of the policy on vandalism, specifically:

Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia.

Since the removal of legimimate links is compromising the integrity of Wikipedia, they would therefore be violating the policy, and be subject to whatever recourse is usual. End of. 88.107.110.247 (talk) 22:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The creator of the bot is currently on vacation; I'm not sure when he'll be back, but it won't be at least for a week I'm pretty sure (unless he decides to pop in). And I would draw your attention to the word "deliberate": in order for this to count as vandalizing, XLinkBot would have to be removing all youtube/blogspot/whatever links regardless of who added them. As it is, this is a simple filtering mistake of the sort that cannot be avoided in any anti-spam bot that will have any affect at all. Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 22:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I agree, it is a mistake. It does become deliberate though if he then allows it to continue to make mistakes when he is aware of it. 88.107.110.247 (talk) 22:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

What you fail to understand, but as many have tried nicely to explain to you, is that the argument is actually irrelevant. No bot works 100% perfectly (heck, no human works 100% perfectly). But for the same reason we don't ban anti-vandalism bots over the rare revert of a good-faith edit in an article concerning genitalia or something of the like, we are not going to ban this bot because now and then, the youtube link was actually good. In my own experience, the vast majority of youtube links added by new or unregistered users are blatant copyright violations, and keeping these off the project is far more important than not causing you a 10 second inconvenience every once in a while. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

And I don't mind that, as long as steps are taken to make sure unregistered users can post legitimate YouTube links! I'm sure it does a lot of good :) 88.107.110.247 (talk) 22:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh. You can just undo the bot's edit, and it won't make it again. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

You have to register to do that though :( I don't want to register. I have tried reverting 2 times and it just switches it back. 88.107.110.247 (talk) 23:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

You'll notice it didn't revert you until you made another edit after reverting the bot. So it was probably actually acting on the next edit you made, and by default reverted all of your edits, which is the norm for anti-spam/vandal bots. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:02, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

There should be no bot removal of YouTube links. While many of those that are linked are copyright violations, some videos are posted on YouTube by the copyright holders, and having links to such videos can be very beneficial to an article. If the bot is programmed to remove the links, won't it just remove them again even if you revert? Everyking (talk) 04:22, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It is time I clarify some things here (as one of the bot operators; I am on holiday, only here now and then):

• The bot reverts links which are in the large majority thought to be unhelpful, or which are strongly pushed by new/unregistered accounts, or which should simply not be here (not only for copyright, but per one or more of WP:NOT#REPOSITORY, WP:NOT#DIRECTORY, WP:COPYRIGHT, WP:EL, WP:COI, WP:RS, WP:OR ..). Youtube is on that list, as it is in over 99% of the cases crap, especially when added by users who don't know our policies (some of which forbid copyrighted material to be linked, though yes, not all youtube videos are copyrighted material) and guidelines.
• It reverts an account once. If the account then adds the link again, a warning is issued to IRC, but the bot does not revert on that page again. It does not make a difference if the user is an IP or registered, or that another user makes that edit. It will revert the user again if he edits another page, though. It does revert if the editor then makes yet another edit to that page where an external link on the revertlist is used.
• It does not revert accounts older than 7 days.
• It does not revert accounts which are whitelisted, that can be named accounts, and IPs .. though the operators should be reluctant to do that for IPs, or it must really be sure that the IP is static.
• For as far as detectable, it does not revert inside references, templates and remarks.
• It does not revert more than 3 times in a 30 hour period on one page, regardless who make the edits (which could be 4 different users adding 4 different links which are on the revertlist).

Now some statistics: en.wikipedia is operating under about 133 edits per minute, of which 73% to content-like namespaces (main, template, category; 96 per minute). In over 6% of these edits external links are added (or changed; including references; so about 6 per minute), containing on average 1.78 external link per edit. For youtube, in about a month since the current database started there were about 15000 youtube links added (about 1 every 3 minutes). Recentchanges has quite some people watching, the link-additions-channel only a few (and quite a few of these are concerned more with the cross-wiki aspect of external link spamming). It is undoable to watch that by eye, and just like VoABot and ClueBot, it reverts on algorithm to decide what is too often a problem, and it does make a few mistakes in that. If it makes mistakes too often, then a rule should be considered for removal.

Youtube links are often a problem(Wikipedia:External links states "There is no blanket ban on linking to these sites as long as the links abide by the guidelines on this page (which would happen infrequently)."), though not banned (if it was banned, it would be on the blacklist). In this way the floodgates are controlled. Youtube videos can be beneficial, and therefor it is possible to override the bot.

I hope this explains and clarifies a bit. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:17, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, this explains a lot. Thanks. It would be beneficial if the bot actually said (in the message posted to the 'offending' user) that you can add the links again without them being reverted. But then, I suppose that's a valuable piece of info for spammers. 88.107.119.54 (talk) 21:44, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

As Beetstra explains, links can be re-added. The bot warns on first addition with a pretty scrupulous good faith msg. It won't revert to itself if the link is re-added. In this case the user was edit-warring with the bot and a real user, re-adding links and getting reverted. [6]

Normally, since I edit as an IP, I'm up in arms about treating new users differently but this has been thought through quite soundly, IMO. The payoff for reverting mostly-dubious URLs on sight from new users is obvious, the bot's msg is good faith, and good links can be re-added. Win. 86.44.26.162 (talk) 19:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to add, the bot will also not revert when one of the undo functions is used (rollback, undo). And in response to 88.107.119.54, the bot is not telling that in the message, per WP:BEANS. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Need admin eyes on US Department of Justice activity, please (CAMERA/lobbying)

149.101.1.130 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC, has made two edits to the article Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which is directly related to the CAMERA/Israeli wiki lobbying mess under way and pending to be an RFAR at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#CAMERA lobbying, fuller details at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Wikilobby campaign. The Justice employee is attempting to scrub any mention of CAMERA's activities to influence Wikipedia (now double-sourced) as seen here in this edit. It's causing a stir on the talk page at Talk:Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America#Edit from U.S. Department of Justice. A warning was left for the IP user here. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 21:33, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The IP editor at Justice is leaving BLP violations all over, in addition to the blanking vandalism at the CAMERA article. He's now on his final warning, whomever it is. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 21:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest contacting the ISP over it. I would imagine U.S. Department of Justice would not like a scandal like this. -- Cat ^chi? 22:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me has blocked the US Department of Justice for four days. Who needs to contact the Communications Committee? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 22:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

See here for the notification. KnightLago (talk) 22:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Any admins looking might want to consider the sources claimed for this piece of disputed text. MickMacNee (talk) 23:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

In the case of the initiator L Cohen, I point to his recently filed, and universaly rejected AFd of G D Stefano, on his nomination grounds of 'do no harm', and he's suing wikipedia for defamation, yet contrast the on wiki fall out of this wikilobby drama he seeks to maintain, there is created a massively POV talk page template defaming a whole organisation. The question being if/when they sue for defamation, what will his stance be? MickMacNee (talk) 01:01, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Somewhat bizarrely, it seems that Admins should not be primarily involved in content disputes, whatever you would like to believe. As I see it, the processes have been followed; end of. Trying to stretch an issue beyond that which it cannot reasonably be taken seems unnecessarily disruptive. Issues tend to have their limits, and unjustified and unexplained leakage would appear to be unhelpful. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 01:20, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

149.101.1.130 maps to "wdcsun30.usdoj.gov", which appears to be one of a group of web proxy servers. There are "wdcsun1" through "wdcsun32", with IP addresses from 149.101.1.101 to 149.101.1.132. I'd suggest putting them on "soft block", to prohibit anonymous editing. It's disturbing to see politically-oriented edits coming from the U.S. Department of Justice. --John Nagle (talk) 04:57, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Not exactly surprising, considering what's been going on at the DoJ for the past seven years. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 05:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Large number of Jewish editors are pushing their anti-palestinian viewpoints in this article though64.126.34.118 (talk) 18:23, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

The religious/political affiliations of editors is irrelevant; fairness and consistent policy is what matters. Durova^Charge! 09:07, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Durova, WP:DFTT. --Relata refero (disp.) 12:05, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this should be brought to the attention of the relevant DoJ oversight committees in Congress? --Dragon695 (talk) 00:09, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Nah , just ring Woodward and Bernstien at the Post ;) Sfan00 IMG (talk) 19:41, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I know people get excited when they see edits from the DOJ. But also I think we need to keep a little perspective. The DOJ is an agency with 100K+ employees. It's far more likely that edits like this are coming from your standard government paper pusher as opposed to edits directly ordered by the Atourney General.--Cube lurker (talk) 19:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

71.178.102.65 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) -- Removes same info Diff -- Any relation to above? Cirt (talk) 19:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Disabling email when blocking

Admins, please keep in mind the email function should not be disabled as a default when placing blocks. Email should only be disabled if it is abused, not preemptively. I've seen this happening more and more frequently. (pet peeve) - auburnpilot talk 21:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. See also Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Setting block options: "This option should not be used by default when blocking an account, but rather it should only be used in cases of abuse of the 'email this user' feature." Is there a specific case/user you're having trouble with, here? – Luna Santin (talk) 03:05, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

It has been said many times. Anyway, probably having it in red font would let blocking admins stop and think for a second before enabling it. Probably also a link to the policy section would help? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 21:39, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Another admin bites the dust

LaraLove appears to of retired within the past few hours. How many admins is that so far this year that have gone from this project? D.M.N. (talk) 08:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

• I predicted that at her RfA. Guy (Help!) 08:47, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Too bad... sometimes things are taken too personal... I've always considered taking a couple of weeks' break from editing or at least from admin tools the best remedy for wiki-stress. --Tone 09:19, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

:( seicer | talk | contribs 13:17, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

What Seicer said... sucks :( Sceptre ^(talk) 13:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Damn... LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Much as Lara and I had severe disagreements in the past (fortunately now resolved), I find this retirement particularly regretable in view of her strong encyclopedia building skills. Burn out, or just generally becoming hacked off with the project, seems to be becoming a major issue, and one I doubt we can fix. Pedro :  Chat  13:54, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Any background on Lara's departure? I know that a lot of administrators have been getting hit hard with a lot of threats and releases of private information, especially when you have dedicated web-sites to that venture. seicer | talk | contribs 14:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

This is too bad. Maybe she'll come back after a break... Is it standard, though, for user - even admin - talk pages to be protected when that user retires?

Likely that she does not want people piling on her talk page to leave messages right now. Let's give it some time and hope that she changes her mind. FloNight♥♥♥ 14:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

This seems (from looking at the past week's worth of contribs) to have been the result of interpersonal online stuff with her and another now-retired user. As a chatroomer from waaay back, I'm still amazed when people get so involved in an online community that they let it disrupt their equilibrium. But obviously she was hurt by SOMETHING, and that's never good. Gladys J Cortez 14:49, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Her recent edit summaries and diffs are frankly unsettling.[7] I hope she comes back, like most "retired" users tend to do (hey, I've done it myself), but it's clear that something has affected her deeply. Raymond Arritt (talk) 18:05, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Song lyrics, for the most part, for the record. Tony Fox (arf!) 18:30, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Raymond--Don't worry, that's just Tool and/or A Perfect Circle. Two (excellent, IMHO) bands, same frontman, some exceedingly dark themes, and LL and the_undertow were colleagues on the band's WP project. Her choice of edit summaries is not as ominous as it would first appear. Gladys J Cortez 06:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Based on the symbol on the top right corner of Lara's userpage, The_undertow has also retired. D.M.N. (talk) 15:52, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Damn (again...) LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:57, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah...that was the "other now-retired user" I mentioned above.Gladys J Cortez 17:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

A sad day for WP. Bearian (talk) 18:36, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Bearian said it best. A sad day. May she return if/when she's ready. Always welcome. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer

• Just to be clear here, I was rather hoping not to have my somewhat gloomy prediction fulfilled, since I too think LaraLove is a decent and nice person and was an asset to the project overall. I hope she'll be back when the stress levels drop. Guy (Help!) 18:40, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Hey all, just wanted to fill a couple things in. the_undertow has indeed retired; he is probably gone for good this time. Lara is taking more of a WikiBreak for personal reasons; she'll be back within a few weeks, most likely. She sends all her well-wishers her best, though. GlassCobra 18:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

• I noticed LaraLove's edits went haywire a few days ago, and obliquely noted it here. I considered e-mailing her some words of support, but didn't feel comfortable doing that as we have clashed a few times in the past. Is that support system thingy still around? <looks> Oh, I see Wikipedia:Stress alerts is inactive. Probably would have been inappropriate, anyway. I guess e-mailing one of her friends might have been the best idea. Carcharoth (talk) 13:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Miyokan and standardization

I would like to bring to your discussion on User:Miyokan (Talk) recent deletion and edition history. Recently, this user has been removing vital code from the article "Template:Russian cities." I am not knowledgeable on whether there is a standardization rule here on Wikipedia, but I hope you would agree that it is a reasonable unwritten rule here. In recent days, this user has removed images all together, added unnecessary information or code, and removed a vital location tool from the template. This has repeated for weeks now, and I would hope that you would agree that this needs to stop.

This is not this user's only notification on deletions and editions on Wikipedia. Miyokan has been noticed about altering the articles "Russian presidential election, 2008," "Ronald Reagan," "Anti-Russian sentiment," and has done others in witch I have no reference for except for on his talk page. I gave this user a warning that I would inform an administrator about these and other edits, but he has refused to acknowledge this and reverted the article again. — NuclearVacuum 15:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I would also like to get some feedback about the process of making a WikiProject in witch to officially standardize the all Templates of city populations. I would both like to get your feedback on this and your opinion on standardizations on Wikipedia: is it an unwritten rule? — NuclearVacuum 15:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I expect this would come under the purview of Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:18, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I have fully explained my edits on talk. NuclearVacuum's has refused to compromise on anything and his entire argument seems to stem from some kind of "standardization" rule, which does not exist, as each template is different. Furthermore, "standardization" does not concern trivial matters (2 images instead of 3, abbreviations instead of the full text, Tnavbar), only the main format of the template has to be the same, which it is.--Miyokan (talk) 02:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

First, Template:Russian cities has been reverted by both parties 3 times in the last 24hrs. Both parties are hereby reminded of WP:3RR and warned to stop this edit warring immediately.

As Gadget850 points out, WP Cities would be a good place to start.

Now, my thoughts on the two different versions: NuclearVacuum's version, Miyokan's version

• 2 pictures looks better than 3. With 3 the photos are a little too small to be useful. If there is any major dispute regarding the number of photos (and yes, the number of photos is a relatively trivial matter), then simply use no photos at all since the total absence of photos would not diminish the information presented.
• Abbreviations for federal subject, state, etc. do not look as good as giving the full name. There's enough space for the full name, and the abbreviations are meaningless to the uninformed reader. Yes, you can see what the abbreviation means if you place your pointer over the text, but why should you have to do that when there is enough room to display the text anyway?
• (third point, forgot to mention it earlier) if it comes down to choosing between 2 images or giving full state names, then I'd give displaying the full names priority.

True, standardisation is an unwritten rule in many areas. BUT there is a difference between coming up with a standard and one person simply saying that their way is standard. And if situations arise where this "standard" doesn't quite fit, then usually it is the standard that needs adjusting. 52 Pickup (deal) 17:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Time for some topic bans?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

As FayssalF said, let's cool off on this for a bit and wait and see what happens with the request for arbitration. Carcharoth (talk) 13:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

---

Allegations of state terrorism by the United States (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been a festering heap of ordure for most of its life, and there appears to exist a small but fiercely determined coterie of editors who are determined to keep it that way. They are trying to get William M. Connolley desysopped for taking some brief but much-needed action there, and looking down the talk page I don't think there's a single editorial policy or guideline they have not violated at some point in their zeal to describe as many acts as possible as state terrorism by the United States. That's my view, anyway, and I don't think I'm alone in that.

I'd be interested to see what other admins think, and whether we believe that a "homeopathy solution" might work here. Guy (Help!) 20:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Has the WP:RfAR on William M. Connolley been rejected? If not, why not use that venue to see if there is a case for having such topic bans considered by the ArbCom. If there is no traction there - since it is a desysopping request - then the question might be raised here. Just a thought. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:19, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, your recent edit ([8]) to the article in question removed a part of the page that you said "lacked consensus to keep". However, the editors and contributors to the article had just came to consensus on the exact bit you removed. You have went against consensus on a controversal topic. Your edit should be reverted. Will allow an admin or you to decide on that. Hooper (talk) 20:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I've just reread the lead comment by Guy here - I really don't think he is asking for himself to be topic banned... ;~) Perhaps it really might be a good idea for this matter to be referred generally to Arbs since - unlike Homeopathy - there is no "alternate subject" that a holder of a viewpoint may be directed toward, and removing some editors (likely with a particular POV) from one article may upset the possibility of their being an unbiased article... or even an article altogether. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:40, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

No they hadn't. Your reading of partial agreement as consensus, is not a correct one. Guy (Help!) 20:47, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

JzG, please take it to arbitration and shine a bright light on this. It looks like the level of tendentiousness is high, and folks are gaming the system. Mediation and other forms of dispute resolution will not work when editors are not acting in good faith. Jehochman ^Talk 23:03, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

As I said on the AfD if you want to deal with this the article will need to be put on probation so that any uninvolved admin can ban disruptive editors from the article without the need for new AN/ANI threads everytime. Topic bans are fine but knowing this article you will simply be playing whack-a-mole with these people. They are easy to recognize, they are the people who only edit this article and related articles. EconomicsGuy (talk) 05:26, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggest arbitration

I am an uninvolved party here, but I understand that this is a dispute that has been going on for a long time, and allegations appear to be flying around all over the place. Is it time to request arbitration? I don't know how to make the request. —  scetoaux (T|C) 22:19, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

See below, quite literally. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:20, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean that this is already fulfilled as Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Request for Arbitration/User:William M. Connolley? —  scetoaux (T|C) 22:24, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

No. These are two wholly seperate issues. Hooper (talk) 22:47, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Abuse of admin tools: editing through protection,again!

Guy is involved in the content dispute on this article, has tried to delete lots of well referenced material--when that failed to gain any consensus he tried to delete this article itself by nominated it for a Afd, which failed. Now he is blanking this long term section against consensus--through protection! This is clear abuse of the tools:[9]. Protection is not an endorsement of a version, and its quite improper to use ones tools to get it locked in the version you want it in. It is a misuse of tools. He even admit in his edit summary,[10] that consensus is lacking, so its completely inappropriate to edit a protected article for items that are not copyright vio or violations of BLP. William M. Connolley recently used his tools in a similarly abusive manner, and has been rebuked and is now facing an arbcom hearing. I ask for this Guy's blanking of a well referenced section through protection, that added with consensus, to be undone. There are several editors now protesting this unilaterial action.Giovanni33 (talk) 22:14, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

If this is the same article as above, may I suggest making this a subsection of that argument? - Ricky81682 (talk) 22:19, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, made it so. --I Write Stuff (talk) 00:22, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I have requested Guy to self revert. I feel we should allow a little time (it is early hours Sunday morning in the UK) to see if he will, and we should AGF that he didn't notice the warning in the meantime. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:09, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Its now 10:30 Sunday. Perhaps he's at church.

I'd like to point out that while I agree that that article needs trimming, cleaning out, and reduction of the long laundry list of complaints that are frequently duplicated from elsewhere, editing repeatedly through protection when editors in good standing object to it is not the way to do it as it is obviously frakking unsustainable! I can't believe anyone would do that, its utterly pointless as a long term solution. I also note that I, who generally despise that article explained patiently on the talkpage at one point that some mention of the section Guy removed was essential, as discussing its relation to terror, terrorism, and just war is the special province of one of the greatest living philosophers, and thus is hardly fringe POV-pushing. Bad show. --Relata refero (disp.) 09:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The article should be stubbed and rebuilt only through {{editprotected}} with robust consensus for every line. The article is, and always has been, an embarrassment. The only thing I did wrong was not being radical enough - the whole lot should come out and we should return to the long-standing principle that once an article exists, the onus is firmly on the editor seeking to include content, to demonstrate its relevance and verifiability, and achieve consensus for its inclusion. When that para about the Hiroshima bombs was originally removed, there was general agreement that to call it an act of state terrorism by the US was historical revisionism; the sources support the idea that with a 21st Century perspective one might include it in the definition of war terrorism, which is a different concept, but the number of sources which identify it as an act of state terrorism by the United States, is vanishingly small. The POV-pushers who WP:OWN that article have simply reinserted it, on the basis that a cosy agreement between a couple of them that some mention may be appropriate means the entire paragraph goes back in. They need to be banned from that article, the article needs to be stubbed, and no edits should be made ever again without robust consensus. It is probably the single shittiest article on the project - and I don't even like the US Government, I think it has for many decades behaved like a spoiled teenager. We are supposed to use our discretion to improve the encyclopaedia. We can improve it significantly by wiping that laundry-list of anti-US rants and starting over properly. ArbCom does not do content disputes, and I don't do needless process, this does not need process it needs firm action and common sense, and it needs it urgently. Article probation, stub, a minimum of six weeks protection, nothing goes in without consensus, topic bans for anyone who is less than entirely helpful in the process, and once the process is done, warnings and bans for anyone who goes in and disrupts it again. It's got to be done. That, or something equally drastic. We've left that horrible excrescence in mainspace for far too long and it should have been dealt with years ago. Oh, and I have no real views on the content, other than that it's crap. Unlike the article's WP:OWNers, I do not feel the compulsion to do down the US Government, and I've been called both a pro-US shill and a US-hater in the past. Guy (Help!) 15:16, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

As of the last discussion, no one opposed the content, it was made smaller in a sandbox view and so for no one opposed. In the previous discussion only yourself and John Smith opposed its addition. Everyone else felt to some extent it should be included. Just to add, I am not going to get into a debate over policy, but the sources do not call it "war terrorism" they call it state terrorism, for us to rename their classification based on your personal opinion is not really permissible. In the future please continue to use the talk page, and refrain from using your administrative tools in cases involving this article, since its clear you are no longer a "disinterested admin" nor "uninvolved admin." I won't be reviewing your response to this statement, as if you appear on the talk page or not to discuss civilly will be all I need to know if you read this. --I Write Stuff (talk) 16:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

• I have reverted to the version in place when protection was imposed, on Guys behalf. A review of Guys contributions indicate that he has not edited since last night, and has likely not seen the various requests to self-revert. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:33, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh well done, you've given the POV-pushers a minor victory and degraded the encyclopaedia in the process. Fantastic job, exactly the kind of thing for which you were given admin tools. Meanwhile, nobody has addressed the festering heap of shit which is that article, nobody has addressed the tendentious editors who WP:OWN it, and nobody has done anything to make that article any less of an embarrassment to Wikipedia. Rather the opposite, in fact. Oh, and it's my son's birthday, am I allowed to take time off from this volunteer project for trivia like that? Do point me to the service level agreements for admins, I'm sure it didn't mention having to be online 24/7. Guy (Help!) 15:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

No, I simply returned it to the version it was at the time of protection - I have no view on the content. However, your response indicates that you are prepared to violate policy and practice to edit to a particular point of view; Fantastic abandonment of the trust and responsibility that the majority of sysops feel bound to abide by. I find it strange that I should even comment that there is the article talkpage with which to attempt to address concerns, although even I cannot believe you are unfamiliar with RfC and RfAR as other avenues to resolve content disputes - the amount of time you spend there. Your opinion of my record in sysop actions is faintly amusing, as it appears that your knowledge of admin practice revolves around the concept of "stuff that I don't feel necessarily applies to me", but otherwise irrelevant. As for being away from the 'pedia; yeah, of course (and it is just one of those unfortunate coincidences that you reappear almost to the half hour of your improper edit being reverted), and I hope your family have a great day. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

No one is required to volunteer, but your previous RfC did conclude that you shoul tone down your incivility. Hooper (talk) 15:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I've warned Guy for the incivility in his edit summary here. Carcharoth (talk) 17:10, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that's uncivil. In fact I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to mean. My interpretation is that it's part of the phrase "tit for tat." Raymond Arritt (talk) 17:16, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

tit for tat and tit might help here. The former is not abbreviated tit, and the latter means "An idiot; a fool." (UK, pejorative, slang) In the context of the sarcasm of "Oh well done, you've given the POV-pushers a minor victory and degraded the encyclopaedia in the process. Fantastic job, exactly the kind of thing for which you were given admin tools.", and Guy's prediliction for UK slang, most reasonable editors would, I believe, conclude that Guy was being incivil here. Carcharoth (talk) 17:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh God, now using the first word of "tit for tat" is cause for "civility alert?" Are you bloody serious? What a heaping, festering load of cow dung. Carcharoth, do you realize what you sound like here? "OMG MOMMY HE SAID A POTENTIALLY MAYBE SORTA BAD WORD!" The "civility" people on this encyclopedia seem determined to prove that their definition of "incivility" knows almost no bounds at all. FCYTravis (talk) 17:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Guy did not say "tit for tat", it is nonsense to suggest that he did. Tit is never used in British English (or any other variety of English as far as I am aware) as an abbreviation for tit-for-tat. It's obvious incivility, and entirely normal behaviour for Guy. I am sick and tired of the way some of his apologists torture the English language to try to excuse his behaviour. DuncanHill (talk) 17:39, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

How do you know what is in his mind? If the post by LessHeard vanU was the "tat," then Guy's response would be... "tit" for that tat. It's as good a guess as yours, if you're going to enter the realm of Guy mind-reading. FCYTravis (talk) 17:43, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I was commenting on the edit summary - which cannot in the English language be interpreted otherwise than as an insult. DuncanHill (talk) 17:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Shall we wait for Guy to comment? Carcharoth (talk) 17:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

FCYTravis, I'm not saying Guy used the first word of "tit for tat". Are you saying he did? I'm saying he used the word tit in a pejorative sense of calling someone an idiot or a fool. Oh, and please don't call my posts bullshit (=cow dung) - just saying that in a different way doesn't make it less incivil. And don't use hyperbole when describing my actions. You are welcome to try and make a case that I run around friviously warning people for incivility, but I don't think you will be able to. DuncanHill, thanks for confirming my point about British English. Carcharoth (talk) 17:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh noes, I said "cow dung." I'm INCIVIL. I'm EVIL. I must be stopped. Pathetic and sad, what this encyclopedia has devolved to. You are an example of what is wrong with Wikipedia - and now I assume you're going to call that "uncivil" too. Good. FCYTravis (talk) 17:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I've never said you are evil or must be stopped. From what I can see, you are a good editor who is upset about something at the moment. I have no problems with name-calling aimed at me, but please don't treat other people that way, they may be quicker to take offence than I am. Hopefully the next time we meet, we can work together on something productive. Carcharoth (talk) 17:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

• comment I never saw Guys edit summary, and now that I have I am not concerned about it - in the UK it is as mild an insult as there is. Is it uncivil? Yes. though barely. Is it appropriate for an admin? No. Does it matter..? Nah, this is Guy; a long time contributor who cut his teeth in the Good Old Bad Old Days when decisive action was its own justification. Things have changed since then, but Guy hasn't. It is a shame that the dear old fart cannot keep up, but we really do not have to spend all this time and effort on this matter. LessHeard vanU (talk) 18:14, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Well, I suspected you might not have seen it. Not everyone reads threads from the history page. I think as tit-for-fart (both mild insults, as you say), this can be forgotten about. The article and its talk page should be of more concern. Carcharoth (talk) 18:20, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Guy wastes so much of everyone's time on Wikipedia that it really would be best if we did all ignore him. Unfortunately, he seems to go out of his way to stir up drama and conflict. Maybe he would be happier on another project, instead of one which requires collaborative effort. DuncanHill (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Guy, again

Is there any recourse for this behavior? [11] I just do not see how this could possibly help the people who are actually attempting to reach a middle ground i this content, its completely destructive and just serves to divide a group who was actually finally engaging in meaningful discussions. I would have removed it, but I honestly fear reprisal for doing so. --I Write Stuff (talk) 16:08, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh for goodness sake, stop crying wolf. You come here every time he makes an unhelpful comment or whatever. You're really abusing the noticeboard and probably hoping that if you throw enough mud some of it will stick. Just lighten up and go edit another article for a few weeks. John Smith's (talk) 16:47, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, from what I can see, Guy is being disruptive there. Others are handling things fine, and Guy should step away. Carcharoth (talk) 16:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe he should, but to ask "is there any recourse for this behavior" is a waste of everyone's time. I Write Stuff clearly has a problem with Guy and indeed William C. He won't make the situation any better by creating a new thread here everytime something happens, as the editors he is in disagreement with will completely ignore him. Is that what he wants? I don't know, I sometimes wonder if he is just going through the motions to justify yet another request for arbitration regarding people that edit the page.... John Smith's (talk) 16:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I guess everyone should sit while Guy decides to insult the article and everyone on it. If Guy wants to help the article perhaps as you put it, he should refrain from making unhelpful comments. I also did not file the Arbcom on William, from his RfC it seems he has his own set of issues. I simply want people to work together in a professional manner. --I Write Stuff (talk) 17:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I didn't say you did file the arb-comm on William. Guy should calm down, but what did you think was going to come out of this? Please tell me. Because I don't believe this is going to resolve anything, just make him more annoyed at you and less likely to listen to you in the future. You could have just made a comment on the talk page or the RfC. John Smith's (talk) 17:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem with them is not personal in nature. It's in regard to their specific disruptive behavior on an article that needs the very opposite kind of 'cool heads" in order to progress. Many dedicated editors who are serious about fixing the article are the ones who have shown to be knowledgeable about the subject, and are working with all view points, and following policies. The problem is we have this "drive by" disruption by a few editors who do not participate much, do not explain their edits, and do not remain cool. Instead, they just call the article names, try to get it deleted, and espouse their own very narrow POV that evidences their ignorance of the subject matter, ignore the claims of expert sources, and then violate admin tool use to push their pov. If topic bans are needed, it's precisely against these editors who are disrupting progress with these unbecoming antics.Giovanni33 (talk) 17:18, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not personal as you say, it's because they're trying to sort the article out in a way you and others do not like. If they were acting in a way you liked you'd be trumpeting their actions and saying it was all good for the project. They're not trying to get the article deleted at all, they're trying to make it better. Guy may be annoyed at the moment, but that's because other editors are doing their best to frustrate the removal of dead wood that needs to be taken out. John Smith's (talk) 17:26, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

No, John. That is not why. For me its not a matter of POV or content, per se. Its a matter of method: 1. collaborative/cooperative editing of working with others, discussing objections in a helpful and specific way, and creating consensus; and 2: following WP core policies, i.e. engaging and respecting what reliable sources say, and putting aside ones personal views in deference of these reliable sources. Its the violation of both of these things that we have a big problem with because its means they are disruptive and POV pushing (probably the former due to the latter). I've noticed a direct correlation being those who are disruptive and those who do not have valid arguments, do not have sources to support their claims, and only insist that their own POV is what matters. Its an untenable position and one that naturally leads to desperation, as we are witnesses, i.e. blatantly breaking rules with the use of the tools, being uncivil, etc.Giovanni33 (talk) 17:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

From where I'm sitting, it does not look like I Write Stuff is the one throwing mud. For the record, I'm sorely disappointed. — the Sidhekin (talk) 17:27, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

He's bringing up behaviour up every time there is a single incident. That is quite ridiculous. As I suggested, Guy should calm down but reporting him every time he says or does one thing will not win him over. If anything it will cause him to explode and make matters worse. The issue needs to be defused, not excited further. It's not as if there is no one there on the talk page. John Smith's (talk) 17:34, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

What do you expect people to do when there is a difference in power and no effective way to address perceived (valid, obvious, and long-standing, IMHO) issues? It does seem like this administrator is getting treated rather lightly when his activities are clearly disruptive. --ElKevbo (talk) 17:46, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I expect people to read the signs of tension and seek a way to calm things down. Putting aside the matter of right and wrong in editing, etc, I think that if most editors were really annoyed about an article and found certain users were repeatedly coming here and complaining, it would make them less likely to change their ways. We have talk page discussions, RfCs, arbitration requests, potential mediation, several existing admin board threads - all open/available and yet we have new threads every day. It's getting out of control and I Write Stuff and other editors need to wait until at the very least the arbitration request is dealt with. John Smith's (talk) 18:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

John Smith, I suggest you tell Guy that as well. If it causes him to explode, who is at fault, Guy or I Write Stuff? Carcharoth (talk) 17:47, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Both. Guy should know better and I Write Stuff shouldn't be pressing the panic button every single time something like this happens. John Smith's (talk) 18:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

<shameless plug for my own essay>See WP:BAIT.</plug> Raymond Arritt (talk) 18:05, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

But you're right, Ray. People shouldn't take the bait and others shouldn't dangle it (even if they don't realise what they're doing, as sometimes people make things worse unintentionally). John Smith's (talk) 18:18, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Just to note I do not think Guy needs baiting to lash out, nor was I attempting to bait him. I was seeking recourse, I wanted to remove the content as clearly not helpful to the discussion, however I was worried about the back lash of doing so. I was honestly hoping, someone who was already aware of this issue, would simply remove the comments as clearly not helpful, and as Guy further venting. I refuse to address these items directly, as admin participation has not been by the book on the article, I rather not see myself cast into exile. --I Write Stuff (talk) 18:42, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

• Just thinking out loud here: is there anyone who thinks that article is actually good? As far as I can tell, everyone other than the warring factions have commented that it sucks royally, and the warring factions state that it sucks royally whenever the opposing faction makes an edit. Note that all comments have been stated in terms of the article and its content; that some individuals see this as a personal effront speaks, I think, of the degree of WP:OWNership that is being asserted there. But hey, you're right: I hate crap in article space, and I have a really hard time pretending it's anything other than crap. Guy (Help!) 12:10, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

To everyone... Can we archive all this blatant waste of space and time as it seems that the ArbCom case would probably be opened soon? In other words, could you apply some temporary injunctions to yourselves meanwhile? If the case is rejected, you can fill again more pages and threads but not as much as everyone would like to open because that would become more disruptive. Your points have been noted for the millionth time and there's no need to repeat them neither loudly nor so frequently. Thanks. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 12:27, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Public domain images (old uploads)

I've recently noticed that some of our old public domain images (in some cases claimed, in other cases clearly PD) that were uploaded many years ago (2003, 2004, 2005) are being tagged and deleted for lack of sourcing information. The lack of sourcing information is in many cases because standards were less strict back then. A recent example is Image:Ac.ptolemy.jpg. There is a large backlog (over 11,000 images) at Category:PD tag needs updating, but many of these will be public domain, and indiscriminate tagging (along with some fixing), as seen here can quickly overwhelm things. It is important to get the workflow balanced right. See also here for an example of a retired editor where lots of tags were placed (some for disputed PD images, some for non-free images). I'd like to ask the advice of admins in general on how to handle this. I recently started a conversation here, but the reaction (saying that the criticism by me and others had been discouraging) actually discouraged me as well, as that editor is doing good work fixing images. I'm just worried that the line is being drawn in the wrong place. I would much prefer to motivate people to help fix images, rather than tag them for deletion when there is a large backlog and not enough people working on it. What can be done? Carcharoth (talk) 02:51, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

You can help with June is Wikipedia Image Cleanup Month and YOU can help! which the whole purpose is "to motivate people to help fix images and educate so there isn't anything to fix". MECU≈talk 04:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the problem is that people cannot easily identify the articles and images in their sphere of interest that require attention. A little while ago I used CATSCAN to identify all the Western Australia-related articles with {{fact}} tags on them, and posted it on WT:WA. A number of people mobilised to attack the list, and about half of it got done in the course of a week or so. I reckon you would see the same effect for just about any combination of topic and maintenance category. For example if someone extracted a list of all the images of plants in Category:All images with unknown source and posted it to WT:PLANTS, you would see immediate action from members of that project.

A longer term solution is to subcategorise. We subcategorise our stubs, so that people can easily find stubs in their area of interest. I've never understood why we don't also subcategorise our maintenance categories. Category:Articles lacking sources is virtually useless, but Category:United States geography articles lacking sources would be very useful indeed, albeit to a much smaller class of editor.

Hesperian 04:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The major problem here lies in poorly written and/or poorly run bots and careless image patrollers who act like bots at the bot speed. It is a fact of life that some web-pages do go down every day. No source or a dead source is just as useless as far as we are concerned and we are not about to go through all images at WMF servers every day to update the status of the WWW when pages disappear or simply change. Even Betabot who can do wonders in term of speed, if not quality, can't scan the web every hour.

Sometimes, the image status is totally clear even if the source is dead. Being able to tell requires human attention and care. Bots can't do that. Human beings who tag dozens images per hour can't do that either. Image patrol is the job that requires utmost care and speed should not be an impediment. --Irpen 05:58, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, tagging images as "source needed" and deleting them when they are clearly public domain because of age, have a stated origin, but no ephemeral internet "source" URL is bloody absurd. I've been asking for ages for a place where I can make a noise about that, but nobody seems to know; meanwhile large numbers of useful images are being deleted. --Relata refero (disp.) 12:04, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Provide a list of examples of such images, and then I'll help kick up a fuss motivate people to do things slower and organise fixing efforts as opposed to tagging and deletion efforts. Carcharoth (talk) 12:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

There were plenty of examples. Here is just a recent one:

1. one, note the years of life of the guy and the image too.
2. two deletion nomination by Kelly
3. three anon adds a source
4. four deletion nom by MER-C because anon is a "banned user"
5. five rv by myself. with addition of proper tag and years of life that both Kelly and MER-C could see if they spent 10 seconds looking at the article and image
6. six. Still retagged for deletion (!) by Kelly per "db-banned"
7. seven, I revert spurious attack on WP content again and
8. eight have to explain to an image patroller some GFDL basics, that is myself being the last editor, being responsible for the image rather than whoever uploaded it, be it Jimbo or a banned troll
9. nine, patroller backs off the deletion urge and replaces a perfectly acceptable description to a bot-readable one for whatever reason.
10. ten, exhausted, I take a safety precaution.

Hopefully, now when someone copies this to commons, no one would have to rehash this circus there one more time. With {{KeepLocal}} the image is safe here. For now. --Irpen 17:47, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Nice description. Thanks. That is a particularly egregious example of rules-lawyering gone mad. Do you have any more examples of images, though? Both ones that are still here and ones that were deleted? Carcharoth (talk) 17:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Easy:

1. one, PD image (again, just look at it and the subject's years of life)
2. two, ifd by Kelly
3. three, anon adds source and a year, 1908 (!)
4. four, again ifd by Kelly who replaces a source with a no-source tag (!)
5. five, anon reverts egregious carelessness
6. six, ifd by MER-C
7. seven, anon reverts
8. eight, umpteenth ifd by Kelly
9. nine, this stupidity gets noticed by me, and, hopefully fixed
10. ten, Kelly adds a bot-read tag
11. eleven, I add more info and a safety precaution again.

More? --Irpen 18:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Yes please. I wasn't aware of all this CSD#G5 stuff going on in the background. I agree it doesn't matter who uploaded the image. Ideally, sources will give a provenance for the image. Websites should say where they got the image from, and artworks can be drawn today of long-dead people, so it is when it was published, not the dates of the subject, that matters. With photographs, you have a clearer argument that the photograph was taken and published in the lifetime of the subject. But even with the artworks, I would still say that insisting on deletion is cutting our nose off to spite our face. If you want to do timelines, fine, but I was hoping for a clear set of 8-10 separate images where deletion is being threatened inappropriately. Carcharoth (talk) 18:27, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Here we go - a random sampling:

• Image:Auto Square Sign 2.jpg - who took the photo? Correctly tagged.
• Image:Breakers, Vanderbilt.jpg - from an old postcard. But how old? This building is still standing.
• Image:Bromeliad with flower spike.jpg - PD-self.
• Image:Brutus2dIDE.gif - fairly obvious imagevio
• Image:Burnout2 Truck Glitch.JPG - another imagevio
• Image:CNV00002.JPG - probably PD-self but it's a vanity pic

Questionable taggings:

• Image:Asotus Cambridge 1566.jpg - probably PD due to age, but definitely needs a description so we know what this is.
• Image:Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 37 - Movement 2 - Adagio.mid - ? It depends on whether the creator added enough originality.
• Image:AmazingGrace.ogg - incorrectly tagged. Should try a search first, then if unsuccessful tag "bad source".
• Image:Aleksander Jan Jablonowski.jpg - incorrectly tagged but should have a source so we can find a higher resolution image and learn more about the painting.
• Image:Aleksander Korwin Gosiewski (-1639).jpg - ditto.
• Image:Archibaldcleghorn.jpg - same as Amazing Grace above.

It'd be great if people actually added a description to the image page, then most of the above problems can be avoided. MER-C 04:10, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

To take one example, Image:Auto Square Sign 2.jpg was uploaded on 25 April 2005. The uploader last edited in February 2008, but only appears to edit sporadically. I think it is a really bad indictment of how badly images were handled a few years ago that it has taken three years for someone to get around to pointing this out to the uploader (who in all probability did take the photo). I know we need to hear that from them, but the PD tag in April 2005 looked like this. It wasn't until 9 January 2006 with this edit that the tag was deprecated and the alternatives listed, as seen here. So a good first step would be to filter out the PD uploads that took place after that date. Does anyone want to do that? Carcharoth (talk) 08:39, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we need to change the image deletion process to allow longer for people to fix PD uploads from before 9 January 2006? Carcharoth (talk) 08:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Daniel Lièvre

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Do we really need a particularly active (across a number of websites he is trying to get included in articles as sources) pro-pedophilia activist causing more disruption and waste of good-faith editor time on Wikipedia? Especially one who encourages users banned for PPA and soliciting minors to sue the Wikimedia foundation? John Nevard (talk) 02:56, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Assuming it's the same person, he is a leading PPA on forums like BoyChat and has participated in discussions about promoting the pro-pedophile agenda on Wikipedia. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 03:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I spent all of five minutes Googling up Daniel Lièvre and had enough. Yeah, there are discussions regarding pro-pedophilia, disguised under some minor -> adult relationship (or something along those lines) and other nonsense on other forums and blogs, including his own. seicer | talk | contribs 03:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Whether or not he is the same person, he's announced himself as that person - even if he's not, the use of that name is provocative, to put it mildly. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Blocked. east.718 at 03:15, April 27, 2008

Ban proposal

Ban this user. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:19, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

He's probably effectively banned already - is there any administrator who's going to unblock someone with the word "pedophilia" in their block log? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 19:51, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

His block is very unfair, you just blocked him because you don't like paedophiles. Like he said paedophilia is not illegal, and while it may disgust us, he should be entitled to his opinion. Of course if he is trying to unfairly push his own point of view in articles then he deserves a block, but if he is trying to build consensus to support his point of view that should be fine. Like he said paedophilia is not illegal, only things such as child rape, or sex with minors is, freedom of thought is paramount, paedophilia is a recognised mental illness. As long as he is not violating 3RR or spamming I don't see why he was blocked, even less banned. I hope he wasn't blocked because of a dislike of paedophiles, this has never been a reason for blocking, blocking for ideological differences or dislike of handicapped people should not be tolerated. Also you should be ashamed to take the content on wikisposure as truth. And finally his strain of thought is not rejected by everyone in France far from it: read French petitions against age of consent laws, they were signed by many politicians and well known intellectuals, including Jack Lang who later became minister of education. Jackaranga (talk) 20:07, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd unblock if there was any sign of useful contributions to articles. --Carnildo (talk) 21:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Also his block log is unfair, none of the people engaged in 3RR over all the "accusations of state terrorism by country ..." articles got a block log saying "terrorism related disruption" Jackaranga (talk) 20:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

If you don't know anything about Pedophilia read the article, nowhere does it say it is illegal. Jackaranga (talk) 20:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm archiving this discussion, as ArbCom have stressed in the past that sensitive discussions regarding blocked possible pro-pedophilia accounts should not be discussed on-wiki. Please direct any further questions or concerns to them. krimpet✽ 21:17, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

In The News

Resolved

Hi guys. I'm not sure where most of the "regular" ITN-updating admins have run off to, but there are a few items on ITN/C that seem to have consensus to go on the live mainpage template. I'm talking specifically about the Nepal Elections and the Bamyan Oil Paintings. A few minutes of help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Random89 05:07, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Template updated. --Tone 07:59, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Spencer^T♦C 17:42, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Susanbryce

I'd like to request User:Susanbryce be officially warned or reminded of Wikipedia's WP:COPYVIO policy.

Even after another editor pointed out to this user on their talk page (Dated:17:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)) on the Street_Children_in_The_Philippines article that they shouldn't do this, this editor still made a recent edit (Dated: 15:25, 22 April 2008) to an article that was essentially a cut and paste from the article it cited. The section read poorly and does not even make sense given the previous sentence in the article.

Human_trafficking_in_the_Philippines#Angeles

The following text:

Angeles Mayor Francis Nepomuceno has acknowledged the problem. “We admit having HIV cases and that prostitution may be flourishing". STD cases rose five times. The RHWC treated 1,421 cases in 2005, 2,516 cases in 2006 and 6,229 cases in 2007. Most of the afflicted were women. [39]

is cut and pasted from this article.

As I am going through the Human trafficking in the Philippines Wikipedia entry even more, I am finding additional WP:COPYVIO violations which I am documenting in the talk page.

I've also found one in the Makati section of the article which I haven't documented on the talk page yet.

HurryTaken (talk) 11:30, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Copyright violation is only a direct cut-and-paste from a copyrighted source. The passage you provide, and the linked article, do not match exactly. The use of specific numerical figures and/or direct quotes from within a work is allowed so long as it isn't a copy and paste, which it is not in this case. VanTucky 19:41, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess I am little confused. What I have found evidence of is a lot of cut and pasting from other sources and very little original and/or re-written work. This is often patched together in order to build a new Wikipedia article or sections of it. But a large percentage of the text is a direct cut and paste.

For example. The sentence: "Angeles Mayor Francis Nepomuceno has acknowledged the problem."

This line is a direct cut and paste from the cited article.

The sentence: "The RHWC treated 1,421 cases in 2005, 2,516 cases in 2006 and 6,229 cases in 2007. Most of the afflicted were women."

This is again a direct cut and paste from the article. But stitched together from different areas of the article.

The actual article says: "The RHWC treated 1,421 cases in 2005, 2,516 cases in 2006 and 6,229 cases in 2007. Most of the afflicted were women; there were only 69 men among the recorded cases."

So they cut and paste and then just ended the sentence at women.

I have additional examples as well that I have posted on the discussion page.

In the Pampanga section of the same Human Trafficking article. The passage in the Wikipedia article reads: "More than a dozen of cybersex operations have been busted in the Pampanga province and Angeles City areas, this resulted in the rescue of hundreds of exploited women, most of them minors or below 18-years of age. Human trafficking or trafficking in person is some sort of slavery.Hundreds of computers sets have been seized, including sex toys and other gadgets used in the cybersex operations mostly maintained by foreigners. A forum hosted by the Prosecution Law Enforcement and Community Coordinating Service (proleccs) discussed several factors that contribute to the human trafficking problem and these include poverty, the proliferation of underground cybersex through internet and sex tourism..[1]"

If you go to the source cited. :::Judiciary, PNP vow stop to human trafficking

"In the past years, more than a dozen of cybersex operations have been busted in the province and in nearby Angeles City areas, this also resulted in the rescue of hundreds of exploited women, most of them minors or below 18-years of age."

This was re-written slightly by omitting or adding a few words.

This line is a direct cut and paste from the article.

"Human trafficking or trafficking in person is some sort of slavery."

This line is a direct cut and paste from the article.

"Hundreds of computers sets have been seized, including sex toys and other gadgets used in the cybersex operations mostly maintained by foreigners."

The last line about a forum being hosted is a stitched cut and paste.

The source says: ..."a forum hosted by the Prosecution Law Enforcement and Community Coordinating Service (proleccs).

And then in another paragraph of the article ..."discussed several factors that contribute to the human trafficking problem and these include poverty, the proliferation of underground cybersex through internet and sex tourism."

If this is not a copyright violation, so be it. But large percentages are being cut and pasted. Sometimes a word is added or sometimes it is stitched together, but the main written text is mostly copied.

I have documented other examples as well on the talk page of that article. The work of checking each of the sources is tedious. If what is being said is that this practice is mostly acceptable for Wikipedia, I will stop checking.

HurryTaken (talk) 20:24, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Without deciding whether to call it copyvio or not, I am pretty sure this is too close to be acceptablehere, thpough I do note that this editor is hardly the only one to contribute to Wikipedia in this manner; I agree that the editor should be advised to rewrite the material more extensively. DGG (talk) 23:30, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Here is my last example, just so the list on what I have researched is complete.

The Makati section of the Human_trafficking_in_the_Philippines#Makati reads, "In 2003, Makati Mayor Jejomar C. Binay ordered a crackdown against prostitution following reports that some prostitutes are linked to criminal syndicates.[52]33 women were rescued from a sex trafficking operation in Makati City by a team of National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents.[53] The Chief of the Southern Police District deployed policemen in schools in Makati City following the abductions of children by those involved in the sex trade industry. P/Supt. Manuel Cabigon, SPD director, said the increased police presence in the vicinity of schools would deter members of a flesh trade syndicate from further pursuing their illegal activities.[54]"

Link to source 54 More Cops Deployed vs Sex Gang

What I am am discussing is the text between source 53 and 54. Bold text.

In this case, we actually have a source citing a source. The source cited in Wikipedia is PREDA, which in turn is citing (actually copied) a Philippine Daily Inquirer article.

The second paragraph of the source says, "P/Supt. Manuel Cabigon, SPD director, said the increased police presence in the vicinity of schools would deter members of a flesh trade syndicate from further pursuing their illegal activities."

This is a direct cut and paste.

The first paragraph is re-written. The source cited says, "THE CHIEF of the Southern Police District yesterday deployed policemen in schools in Makati City following the abduction of a 15-year-old high school student on Tuesday."

HurryTaken (talk) 23:51, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me if my tin foil hat is on too tightly, but do you happen to be User:RodentofDeath? See also WP:AE#RodentofDeath and Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/RodentofDeath, although the RFCU data appears stale. MER-C 05:27, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

No. I am not Rodent of Death. And I really am at a loss for how I can prove that I am not. At this point I guess it is mostly out of my hands. However, the editor that is the subject of this WP:AN has already reported me to WP:AE#RodentofDeath, per the link you provided above. Edgarde has already chimed in that he thinks I am Rodent of death. Again, I am not. But those two seem to think I am. I honestly don't believe that this makes the issues I have brought up any less legitimate. And I have admitted to knowing and being familiar with the history between the two as I have followed it as lurker for quite some time. That is especially why I have taken great pains to be as factual as possible with my questions and concerns and stick strictly to the facts. HurryTaken (talk) 05:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

account identification

Hi. There is an old account I think may be mine but my password attempts failed and the requested new password did not arrive. It may have an old email address that I no longer have access to, and I may be able to prove it to an admin who can see the account info. Can we try, or is a new account my only option? I use that id elsewhere in cyberspace and really like it; I would hate to have to give it up. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.252.11.32 (talk) 20:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Ummm... I'm not sure. I will ask the community;

Community, is it possible for this anon to email a CheckUser with the name of the account and the possible email address (and likely geographical area for the underlying ip) to confirm whether this could be an old account? If it is very likely, would the ip then be able to usurp the account? LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:38, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK, checkuser can't see email addresses, but even if there is still any checkuser data left, the IP is a dynamic IP on a /12 range probably shared by every Verizon user in Washington D.C. Its pretty unlikely that the IP and the account could be confirmed to be the same person. Mr.Z-man 20:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

A developer could read the e-mail address straight out of the database tables, but I expect they have many better things to do with their time. Try Special:Emailuser/Tim Starling, and be very appreciative :D. Happy‑melon 22:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Anonymous user needs an account to use email function, though. Does anyone know Starling's real email address? hbdragon88 (talk) 23:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Blocking to end a discussion?

In this edit an administrator threatened to block users who continue a discussion s/he doesn't like. This seems to me to be problematic: the ability to block doesn't exist to impose silence or "closure" on a discussion, but rather to prevent damage to the project. Any thoughts? --FOo (talk) 21:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggest following the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Statement_re_Wikilobby_campaign and/or moving any further discussion to the talk page. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Awesome report, and excellent work. But it's not relevant to the concern I raised above: that admins shouldn't be threatening to block people for continuing a discussion they don't like. --FOo (talk) 23:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

He didn't threaten to block for continuing it, he threatened to block for "further non-constructive posting" after a thread at the bottom of the page reached consensus that the page had turned into a giant troll magnet. That's not inappropriate at all. --erachima talk 00:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Flickr accounts and contacting photographers

Sorry for posting this in the wrong place. Need some help with contacting a Flickr photographer in a case of image management burnout. See here, and here. Would anyone here be willing to contact the Flickr photographer who posted this, and ask for more permissive releases for that photo and the other three listed at PUI? And is there a place to make such requests? Carcharoth (talk) 23:15, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I've sent a flickr mail. Gimmetrow 23:26, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

PHG is required to provide a means for the Community to verify his sources.

5) For the next year:

• PHG is required to provide a means for the Community to verify his sources. For the next year:

• PHG is required to use sources that are in English and widely available.

and/or

• PHG is required to use a mentor to assist with sourcing the articles that he edits. The mentors selected must be approved by the Arbitration Committee. In case of doubt raised by another user in respect of a source or citation by PHG, the mentors' views shall be followed instead of those of PHG.

• • the above clarification to the case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance was passed by the arbitration committee. PHG may choose either or both options here. Case page has been updated and PHG has been notified. For the committee... — Rlevse • Talk • 23:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

User:MZMcBride and large numbers of deletions

Recently I have become concerned about the sheer number of deletions (literally hundreds in the past week alone: see log) carried out by MZMcBride, especially as a number are borderline-WP:CSD. A quick glance at his talk page shows that almost every message is complaining about a page he has deleted; however, these complaints are from a mixture of not just new users, but also experienced contributors and even other administrators. Particularly, I'm concerned that this user is either being overzealous, or taking the speedy deletion criteria a little too literally sometimes and could do with a lesson in WP:IAR.

Some specific examples:

• Deletion of accidentally-named user subpages. For instance, User:Hammersfan GoLondon/Dutchflyer, User:Hammersfan London Broad Street and User:Hammersfan City & Hertfordshire, were clearly meant as user-subpages created by User:Hammersfan, but for some reason (probably by accident) without the "/" to create a subpage. So, MZMcBride deleted them. Instead of just deleting them as "csd u2", the creator should have been notified, so that the pages could be moved to an appropriate place.
• Similarly, User:Qz3 appears to prefer to be known as "Algonquin" (as suggested by their signature) [12], and thus had was using User:Qz3 (Algonquin) as a user page. Of course, this was deleted under CSD U2 as well, when it should probably just have been moved to the right place with a note left to say why this isn't the right thing to do.
• Here's another one: User:Majoreditor\Utilities (log): the wrong type of slash could have been fixed without deleting the page first!
• Or what about deleting archived user talk that was accidentally in the talk: namespace rather than the user talk: namespace: Talk:T. Anthony/Women in Red, Talk:T. Anthony/Missing Africans, and Talk:T. Anthony/Missing Awards and their winners. Again, these should have been moved rather than deleted.
• Deletion of talk pages of deleted articles, where the talk page was specifically kept. See Talk:The weather in London ( log) and Talk:Classical music in popular culture (log).
• Deletion of image redirects: see this discussion.
• Deletion of empty categories. Yes, I'm aware that CSD C1 says that empty categories can be deleted. However, Category:Railway stations served by Southeastern which I created as part of a series (see subcategories of Category:UK railway stations by train operating company) and was populating by AWB runs. Due to other, off-wiki commitments (and a dead computer) I hadn't got around to filling this one, so it went under CSD C1; a quick check of the parent category should have revealed this was a work in progress. So I had to recreate it, causing extra work for myself.
• Also, the deletion if categories that exist for maintenance purposes, and thus which are empty from time to time, such as Category:Wikipedia_requested_photographs_in_Brown_County,_Illinois (log).

In many cases, the problem is subsequently repaired, but it would have saved everybody trouble if it had not been created in the first place. However, some of the (often perfectly legitimate) complaints often result in responses which are grumpy and sarcastic, such as this (and my request for an apology was just plain ignored).

I would be interested to know what other admins think of this. --RFBailey (talk) 00:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Heh. This user is upset because I deleted a category that sat empty for a month, and they're now trying to use AN to cast me in a negative light. Pretty pathetic. I do a lot of deletions, which logically means that the number of talk page posts that I get about them is higher than normal. However, I'm always quick to reply to any user's concerns. In almost all cases, the issue is someone else making a mistake (creating user pages that don't belong to a registered user, getting confused about broken redirects, etc.). If anyone has any valid concerns about my deletions, feel free to post on my talk page (it seems to be quite a popular thing to do ; - ) ). --MZMcBride (talk) 00:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Again, people run to AN in efforts to create more unnecessary drama. All of these deletions are justifiable, as evident from the reasons that they were deleted. Don't bring users here because of your personal grudges. Read the policies, guidelines and procedures, and understand them, and if you have questions about an administrator action, ask the administrator. What do you hope to accomplish here? I think there is an encyclopedia that needs writing around here somewhere. - Rjd0060 (talk) 01:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what happened to WP:AGF? I'm not trying to create drama, I don't hold grudges, and I certainly don't like being described as "pathetic". I am fully aware of the criteria for speedy deletion (I admit to not being able to remember which one is which off the top of my head, but I know where to go to look them up); I have been an editor here for nearly three years and I know the policies pretty well. But I am also aware of ignore all rules, and when it should be applied.

What did I hope to achieve? I wanted to bring genuine, valid concerns that I had to the attention of other administrators, which I what this page is for, as I have done when I have had concerns before. I know that this is "not the Wikipedia complaints department". I am not an admin, but I watch the administrators' noticeboard and I know the sort of nonsense people bring here. In response to MZMcBride, I did bring the matter to his talk page [13], but all I got in response was something grumpy and dismissive [14]; my follow-up remarks [15] (which were meant in good faith) were ignored.

Also, MZMcBride's reply, where he says "In almost all cases, the issue is someone else making a mistake" is symptomatic of the issue/attitude that I was trying to discuss. Yes, some of the items I mentioned above were the mistakes of others (e.g. use of a forward space instead of a slash, not understanding username policy), but they could have been corrected without irritating people by deleting pages/categories/etc. which later had to be moved/restored/recreated. And yes, the deletions I described above were all within policy, but only marginally. To emphasise, each mistake which led to a minor policy violation could have been solved my a means other than deletion. By all means, speedy delete nonsense pages, implausible redirects, etc. But when something becomes a policy violation because of a technicality, then that should be handled with more care, I think.

Finally: yes, there is an encyclopaedia that needs writing around here, but deleting bits of it unnecessarily doesn't help with that. --RFBailey (talk) 01:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Our job is not to go around correcting every other user's mistakes. If a page or category has sat empty for a month, then there is a great need to remove the category. If the user hasn't stepped up to the plate to correct these mistakes -- which often go unnoticed for months, then it stands that deleting it can work just as well. Simply put, these are the mistakes of others, not of administrators whose job is purely that of a janitor. Anyone who has done the dirty work of removing crap or unnecessary fodder from Wikipedia -- whether it is test pages, vandalism, empty categories, copyrighted images, and so forth -- will soon realize that not all will appreciate the efforts that are taken to keep Wikipedia manageable. I can't remember the number of times I've been criticized for deleting a page and yada yada, but it's just part of the territory.

Could it be handled with more care? Maybe. But there are way too many test pages, empty categories and other garbage that needs to be taken out, and pandering to every little instance of someone crying wolf or complaining that their personal web-page was deleted doesn't help either. There are appropriate venues for un-deletions -- and coming to AN for every little instance (and I'm not talking about you RFBailey, but in general) isn't very constructive. seicer | talk | contribs 03:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem (maybe this is a problem with policy more than anything else), is that deleting content has the side-effect of rubbing people up the wrong way, and doesn't always look as if good faith has been assumed. True, adminstrators are not responsible for fixing others' mistakes, and there is an awful lot of crap, as you put it, out there. However, if in the course of their duties, an administrator comes across a mistake that can be easily corrected, then why not correct the mistake rather than delete a page which may then need to be taken to deletion review, or recreated, or whatever, destroying good will in the process?

Besides all of that, when a user makes a good-faith post on this page, I don't think they should be shouted at for it, and certainly not described as "pathetic" (what happened to WP:NPA?). Where else would you suggest bringing such an issue for administrators' attention? --RFBailey (talk) 03:38, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that RFBailey is entirely in the wrong. I think that deletion is really more of a last resort thing. Wrong slash? Just move it. No slash? Move it. Empty category? Can it be populated first? MZMcBride is doing a great job, but I think that there are alternatives besides deletion when it comes to housekeeping. bibliomaniac15 Do I have your trust? 03:56, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Seriously, Seicer, we are not that busy — or, if we are, then we'd better urgently recruit more admins. I know fully well how tedious and thankless sweeping the dirty corners of Wikipedia is, but there should always be time to at least briefly engage your brain before performing an admin action. After all, in the cases like the user page deletions RFBailey mentioned, it would not have taken any more effort to move the page than to delete it, and doing so would've left much fewer bite marks on newbies.

Anyway, what exactly is that "great need" to remove empty categories you speak of? Sounds more like busywork to me. Certainly you're not freeing any precious server resources that way — any change made to Wikipedia, whether is be creating, editing or deleting pages, only causes the database to grow. It never shrinks. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

There's no reason to delete a misnamed page, rather than move it to the correct name. This shouldn't be at WP:AN, but only because it should only take a comment or two on a user talk page to change these deletion habits. The role of an admin is to correct mistakes, not look for excuses to delete. JPD (talk) 04:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The last time this came up, I did ask MZMcBride to stop his deletions of talk page redirects not linked from anywhere. He refused to do so, though recently CSD has been tightened up so that redirects (other than those created by housekeeping work) are explicitly not mentioning in WP:CSD#G6, so I hope MZMcBride takes note of that. One thing I did see at the time on his talk page was that Talk:T. Anthony/Women in Red, Talk:T. Anthony/Missing Africans, and Talk:T. Anthony/Missing Awards and their winners were moved, to User:T. Anthony/Women in Red, User:T. Anthony/Missing Africans, and User:T. Anthony/Missing Awards and their winners. But as RFBailey points out, a little bit of clue first would have avoided the "delete-talk page thread-undelete-move" sequence. I also recall WJBScribe objecting to these deletions in general (referring to those by East718). The trouble here is that this is an obscure activity on obscure pages - no-one really gets upset enough to justify MZMcBride being asked to stop, but equally it could be said that his work is not really helping in any useful sense of the word. It seems that MZMcBride just wants to avoid discussing deletions that he feels are "obvious". I suggest he actually discuss a few of them and see if they are as obvious as he thinks. Carcharoth (talk) 05:13, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I discuss deletions with nearly every user who posts to my talk page. I posted to AN a few weeks ago asking about the user pages that don't belong to a user. I didn't see three or four admins willing to help out then. But you all feel free to take pot shots at the work I'm doing (all of which is within policy) rather than help out when asked. As I recall, when I posted the list of user pages, several users replied, most complaining about the workload, with a few wondering if a bot could do the work for them.

I ran a few numbers. Assuming that every <h2> on my talk page for the month of April is a complaint about a deletion (of course, not all of them were), I've had 80 complaints. During the month of April, I've deleted 30,530 pages. 80 out of 30,530, and nobody's complaining that they were out of process, though someone is complaining that I should "Ignore all rules" more often and not delete them. That's pretty interesting.

When I explain to users what their mistakes were, the usual response is "Oh, Ok. Thanks for the clarification." or "Thanks I'll fix the \ to a /" or "Many thanks - I see the problem now." or "Thank you so much for fixing the link!"

I have a list of several thousand user talk pages that don't correspond to a registered user. They're here. Any volunteers to help out? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Why not try and analyse the list? Follow redirects for a start (those things you delete because they are unhelpful). User talk:Cimon avaro/archive 4 should be at User talk:Cimon Avaro/archive 4. Compare this and this. User talk:Jtdirl/Archive 7 is now a redirect because it got moved (I guess you will end up deleting that redirect in a few weeks as part of "housekeeping", right?). All the pages with "\" in them could be split off into one section. Just presenting a huge list like that doesn't actually encourage people to get involved - it puts them off. So analyse a bit more, break it into bite-sized chunks, and you will get a better response. Carcharoth (talk) 07:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I can only surmise from your tone and the content of your post that you're under the influence. Neither User talk:Cimon avaro/archive 4 nor User talk:Jtdirl/Archive 7 are redirects, though apparently I'm supposed to be able to follow them? And apparently grep is a precious commodity only given out to the Chosen? Ohs, Imma so sorry massa for not betta analysin' the list. Is they anythin' else I can doos for ya?Striken, with apologies. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant User talk:Jtdirl (Archive 1). And my point about User talk:Cimon avaro/archive 4 (which is now a redirect thanks to Graham87) is that you could check to see if User:Cimon avaro is a redirect, which it is, to User:Cimon Avaro. My suggestion was that you analyse the list before offering it to others to help you fix it. If you don't like the suggestion, I'm sure you can find politer ways to say that. I would still ask that you not follow yourself around in a few weeks time "tidying up" the redirects these page moves will have created. Even if they don't link to anything, please discuss at WT:RFD and WT:CSD to get consensus on deleting the redirects. Some of these are pages from 2003 and there is a higher chance that external links will be pointing inwards to these user pages. Carcharoth (talk) 08:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

For what it is worth, I count around 100 items there with a "\". Those could be tackled first. Capitalisation tests on the "User" bit should also help. Carcharoth (talk) 08:27, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec) User talk:Cimon Avaro/archive 4 is a redirect and I don't think users going round accusing each other of being drunk is acceptable - it isn't even at the borderline. Please retract that comment and apologise. WjBscribe 08:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm more concerned about the final bit, but whatever. I'm more frustrated that people spend time in the bowels of Wikipedia instead of on stuff like this. On the other hand, maybe it is best if people do what they are best at. Carcharoth (talk) 08:31, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The use of deletion scripts by admins has always been something on which consensus is hard to divine. There seems to be a tacit understanding that while it technically breaks the rules, a blind eye is turned provided the deletion scripts in question are improving the project. This comes from a view that getting official approval for adminbots is impossible, though I must say that official requests for such bots are pretty thin on the ground. The crucial factor to my mind is that if someone is going to delete at bot speeds without there being human review of the content they need to get it right. If people are pointing out errors, change the script or stop running it. If someone in good standing (especially if they understand the pages you are deleting better) asks you to stop running a bot task, stop running it. At the very least where the running of such unauthorised deletion scripts is raised and investigated, the runner of the task should respond helpfully and civilly. Hurling around insults and accusation is not the response I expected to find here. AN is exactly the place to be discussing controversial actions - pages being deleted automatically without human review where a plausible case for their retention can be made is a problem rightly being discussed here. WjBscribe 08:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

See my comments at User talk:MZMcBride/Sandbox 9. I am strongly against deleting pages on lists like this without checking *every* *single* page. Often they are historical pages which were created when titles for standards were looser. While I'm here, can someone create an account for User:Test article to save User talk:Test article from meeting the CSD for some arbitrary, technical reason? I can't do it because I can't fill out the CAPTCHA. There is no reason for it to be deleted and no reason for it to be moved. Thanks, Graham87 09:03, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Created. WjBscribe 09:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Is there any reason for that page not to be deleted? It looks like a software test from 2003, not something that needs to be kept around. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I manage to delete about 3,000 items a year without using any scripts at all. Even without scripts a few people complain, and they are once in a while right. I wonder how much damage I would do if i did use them. DGG (talk) 03:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Grawp page move undo problem

Resolved

Something happened during the undo of the page move on Star Trek. I got Talk:Star Trek back to where it's supposed to be, but I can't undo the delete of where the article ended up. I think we're going to need a developer to go fix it. Until such time, I put in an unavailable note and fully protected the article in case people are trying to read/edit the article. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 09:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, when I tried to undelete it, too, I got a blank page. Tried faking my undelete token via a POST request, and that didn't work either. Would you like me to grab a recent version from the toolserver, and paste that over the Star Trek article until we get this sorted? SQL^{Query me!} 10:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably can't hurt. An old revision without history is probably better than empty page there now. Might want to put in a note of some sort that it's an old revision. I sent Tim Starling a note about getting it properly fixed. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 10:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Fixed with Splarka's help on IRC, using Twinkle (didn't know it could do that!) SQL^{Query me!} 10:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of doppelganger pages

Have a look at the deletion log here. That was a doppelganger page of an indefinitely blocked user being deleted (it was User:Conrad Dunkerson, someone impersonating User:CBDunkerson). Should such deletions really be done? Have a look at what happened here and here. If the original doppelganger page hadn't been deleted, the first admin would have been more likely to see what was going on and could have dealt with this and avoided the time of two other admins being wasted by the trolling use of unblock requests. So where does it say that doppelganger pages should be deleted? Is this something that was done back then, but doesn't happen any more? Carcharoth (talk) 10:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I know I probably don't speak for everyone here, but, ordinarily when I handle unblock requests (or, consider blocking a user), I always make sure to check the users talkpage history. "View or restore 4 deleted edits?" would send up a red flag to me... SQL^{Query me!} 11:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Another reason why the proposal at WT:UP to not always delete pages from banned users is a good idea. -- Ned Scott 10:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Recreation of blacklisted page

A page Dusan Hristovic was created, probably to circumvent the blacklisted page Dušan Hristović.  Andreas  ^(T) 13:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Titleblacklist whitespace issue

Resolved

 – There was a regex on the blacklist to filter out space lookalikes - it contained the actual space character too by accident - it has now been removed. --Random832 (contribs) 15:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Possum (game)

Why can't i create a page with this name? it says its on the local black list?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geologize (talk • contribs) 13:06, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be something up with the blacklist as I cannot create Hans-Henrik Ørsted. Severo^TC 13:09, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Please see the below section. Nakon 13:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Unable to create a user talk page for 204.82.152.158

I am unable to create a talk page for user 204.82.152.158 as I am told that it has been blacklisted. I reverted some minor vandalism on the Yawn article and I wanted to leave a message on the talk page. LittleOldMe (talk) 13:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Please see the section below. Nakon 13:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Blacklisted

I was creating the article for Critical social work, and was writing it from scratch. I would type a few lines, and preview it, and did this many times, when suddenly the following message appeared instead of the draft page: The page title that you have attempted to create has been included on the local title blacklist, which prevents it from being used due to abuse. If you have a good reason for creating a page with this title, or if you receive this message when attempting to edit an existing page, please let us know at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Be sure to specify the exact title of the page you are trying to create or edit, as well as a brief explanation of what you were trying to do. Thank you. I cant find the article anywhere on the blacklist, what is happening? Cheers, --rakkar (talk) 13:09, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a bug. Have you tried creating it again since then? --erachima talk 13:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The same happened to me while I was creating 2004 Catalan motorcycle Grand Prix. Asendoh (talk) 13:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Please see the section below. Nakon 13:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Look at that. solved! Lucky I still have all the text. preview every few lines, or write it up in notepad & copypasta the final text PPL. --rakkar (talk) 13:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Blacklist error

As an upstanding editor, I have never seen the "Unauthorized" message before, but it came up repeatedly for Portal:Rapid transit/Selected article/Archive/Week 19 2008.--MrFish^{Go Fish} 13:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Please see the section below. Nakon 13:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Unauthorised ... blacklist ... and your page disappears

Why, when you find a name in wikipedia (Phillip Pendal, a Western Australian politician) that doesn't have a page, and you spend ages creating a page, does everything disappear when you click on Show Preview. There was a message about a blacklist - why didn't that message come up when I clicked on the link to create the page? Why has all the data that I typed in disappeared before I could have saved it somewhere? Infuriating. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamiltonraja (talk • contribs) 13:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

If your browser supports it, using the back key should bring up the page with all the text you wrote still there--rakkar (talk) 13:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Please see the section below. Nakon 13:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The Back key didn't bring back the data, it's lost and can stay lost. What on earth does a message like "Please see the section below. Nakon 13:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)" mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamiltonraja (talk • contribs)

It means please look below to the post "This was a temporary software glitch, caused by the page name blacklist not working in the way I expected. I've now reverted the change. Please let me know if this recurs: it should now be unblocked." Nakon is the name that he/she edits under, just like yours is Hamiltonraja. Woody (talk) 13:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

ABB Grain Limited blacklisted

Same problem as above. Timsdad (talk) 13:13, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Please see the section below. Nakon 13:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Wainscott (LIRR station) sandbox

Apparently, somebody put a sandbox of a proposed article on Wainscott (LIRR station) on a local title blacklist. When I tried to find out why, I got the following gibberish:

1. This is a title blacklist; every title that matches regex here are forbidden to create and edit
2. Use "#" for comments; see the talk page for more options.
3. Please log additions to the title blacklist log.

1. Note: internally, the pattern delimiter is '/', so be sure to escape all '/'s.
2. Also, UTF-8 mode is enabled.

.*[НHΗＨ][EЕΕＥ][RＲЯ][MМΜＭ][YΥＹ].* <casesensitive> .*[НHΗＨ][AΑАＡ][GＧԌ][GＧԌ][EЕΕＥ][RＲЯ].* <casesensitive> .*[НHΗＨ]\W*[AΑАＡ]\W*[GＧԌ]\W*[GＧԌ]\W*[EЕΕＥ]\W*[RＲЯ].* .*[НHΗＨ]\W*[AΑАＡ]\W*[GＧԌ]\W*[GＧԌ]\W*[AΑАＡ]\W*[RＲЯ].* <casesensitive> .*JEWS DID WTC.* .*ON WHE.* <casesensitive> .*[!?‽]{3,}.* .*Template.*arab.*world.*unity .*Seth.*Patinkin.* .*Jan.*Szatkowski.* .*Bill.*Beggs.* .*William.*Beggs.* .*massive cock.* .*(?:http|https|ftp|mailto|torrent|ed2k)\:\/\/[\w\d:@\-]+\.[\w\d\-]+.* .*\bis\s+(?:a|an)\s+(?:dick|cunt|fag|bitch|shit|fuck|loser|ass|gay|ghey|moron|retard|stupid|slut).* <autoconfirmed> .*？.* .*\bnimp\.org.*

1. NB: the characters in the following string are NOT spaces:
2. this string blocks dodgy "space-like" characters which should not be
3. present in properly normalized names

.*[ ᅟ           

  　ㅤ].*

What's the point of putting this in my way? ----DanTD (talk) 13:13, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

This was a temporary software glitch, caused by the page name blacklist not working in the way I expected. I've now reverted the change. Please let me know if this recurs: it should now be unblocked. -- The Anome (talk) 13:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that the _first_ character in your blacklist entry was an actual space: {U+0020, U+115F, U+115F, U+2002, U+2003, U+2002, U+2003, U+2004, U+2005, U+2006, U+2007, U+2008, U+2009, U+200A, U+2028, U+2029, U+202F, U+205F, U+3000, U+3164, U+FFFC} --Random832 (contribs) 13:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the blacklist

I've now reverted an earlier -- hopefully entirely harmless -- change to the blacklist. This shouldn't break anything. But if it does, it's my fault. Grrr. -- The Anome (talk) 13:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Protecting the Main Page article

Resolved

 – Someone else reprotected it. But seriously Bishzilla, avoid suddenly going against year old practices on your own, for fear of finding out the hard way why such practices exist. Jackaranga (talk) 14:05, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I've unprotected the Main Page article, Prince's Palace of Monaco. Don't protect unless necessary, and then semi-protect briefly. Full protection because of a single IP is using a hammer for a gnat. I've blocked the offending IP instead. bishzilla _ROARR!! 13:38, 28 April 2008 (UTC).

I can't see anything wrong with a simple move protection personally, it will avoid problems later, and the page should not be moved without discussion first anyway. Jackaranga (talk) 13:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Move protection re-added, set to expire tomorrow. Nakon 14:06, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I've often mistaken a move-protect for a full protection. Some people miss "[move=sysop]", so adding the protection summary of "move protect" (as Nakon did) helps get the point across. Carcharoth (talk) 14:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Copyright violations from User:Stu8912

Stu8912 (talk · contribs) has uploaded a number of photographs, many of which have been deleted as copyright violations. I gave him a final warning about this on 23 April, and blocked him for 24 hours when he continued to upload copyright photos on 26 April. Since then he has made no further edits. However, there are still several photographs he has uploaded which I suspect may be copyvios. Typical sources are [16] and [17]. See also the first two entries in Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images/2008 April 28. Could someone assist me in looking through the remaining images, and deleting if necessary. Thanks. —  Tivedshambo  _(t/c) 18:10, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

It might also be worth pointing out that the overwhelming majority of User:Stu8912's contributions seem to be centered around Angelo State University, or things affiliated with it. --Dynamite Eleven (talk) 22:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion

Can a few folks help clearing the backlog of images in CAT:CSD? There are a lot of images which a few users have tagged for deletion as noncommercial after they checked the source (commonly Flickr) and discovered that it was tagged with an inappropriate CC tag. Stifle (talk) 20:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

This is something that bugs me massively whenever I see it- kudos to the taggers. I've deleted a few, and would delete more, but I am somewhat distracted. J Milburn (talk) 22:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Grawp

Fuck WP:DENY, we have a serious problem here. I don't want my watchlist looking like this every day:

1. (Deletion log); 11:27 . . B (Talk | contribs) deleted "Talk:HAGGEЯ?(spaces)" (content was: '#REDIRECT Talk:Akrotiri and Dhekelia' (and the only contributor was 'B'))
2. (Deletion log); 11:27 . . B (Talk | contribs) deleted "HAGGEЯ?(spaces)" (content was: '#REDIRECT Akrotiri and Dhekelia' (and the only contributor was 'B'))
3. (Move log); 11:27 . . B (Talk | contribs) moved Talk:HAGGEЯ?(spaces) to Talk:Akrotiri and Dhekelia over redirect (vandalism)
4. (Deletion log); 11:27 . . B (Talk | contribs) deleted "Akrotiri and Dhekelia" (deleted to make way for move (CSD G6))
5. (Move log); 11:27 . . B (Talk | contribs) moved HAGGEЯ?(spaces) to Akrotiri and Dhekelia (vandalism)
6. (diff) (hist) . . Something Nice Back Home‎; 11:18 . . (+32) . . 78.156.210.247 (Talk) (da:)
7. (diff) (hist) . . Amy Winehouse‎; 11:11 . . (-13) . . Wildhartlivie (Talk | contribs) (copy edit)
8. (Move log); 11:04 . . Heaðobards (Talk | contribs) moved Talk:Akrotiri and Dhekelia to Talk:HAGGEЯ?(spaces) (for grеat juѕtice аnd еpiс lulz; аlsο, gο tο (redact) [а muѕt-ѕее])
9. (Move log); 11:04 . . Heaðobards (Talk | contribs) moved Akrotiri and Dhekelia to HAGGEЯ?(spaces) (for grеat juѕtice аnd еpiс lulz; аlsο, gο tο (redact) [а muѕt-ѕее])
10. (diff) (hist) . . m List of incomplete Doctor Who serials‎; 10:33 . . (+1) . . Moochocoogle (Talk | contribs) (→Third Doctor)
11. (diff) (hist) . . Max Mosley‎; 10:16 . . (-321) . . 4u1e (Talk | contribs) (trim lead per template. Article is 35k+ characters, for which WP:LEAD recommends 3-4 paragraphs)
12. (Deletion log); 10:09 . . Luna Santin (Talk | contribs) deleted "Talk:HAGGEЯ?(spaces)" (CSD G8 - talk page of a deleted page)
13. (Deletion log); 10:09 . . Luna Santin (Talk | contribs) deleted "HAGGEЯ?(spaces)" (content was: '#REDIRECT Star Wars' (and the only contributor was 'Luna Santin'))
14. (Move log); 10:09 . . Luna Santin (Talk | contribs) moved Talk:HAGGEЯ?(spaces) to Talk:Star Wars over redirect (revert)
15. (Move log); 10:09 . . Luna Santin (Talk | contribs) moved HAGGEЯ?(spaces) to Star Wars over redirect (revert)
16. (Move log); 09:53 . . Gifðas (Talk | contribs) moved Talk:Star Wars to Talk:HAGGEЯ?(spaces)(for grеat juѕtice аnd еpiс lulz; аlsο, gο tο (redact) [а muѕt-ѕее])
17. (Move log); 09:52 . . Gifðas (Talk | contribs) moved Star Wars to HAGGEЯ?(spaces)(for grеat juѕtice аnd еpiс lulz; аlsο, gο tο (redact) [а muѕt-ѕее])

We've got several problems here:

• It took nearly twenty minutes for admins to fix serious vandalism on the article for Star Wars
• It is very easy for sleeper attacks (two in an hour, and my watchlist is rather small - 200 items including most of my images, and some wikiprojects and noticeboards)

So think. What's the best way of fixing this? We could implement an edit requirement on moves - it's one line of code, IIRC. But we really need to stop Grawp. Sceptre ^(talk) 21:06, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

If only there was someone that could save us... Nakon 21:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Aren't moves part of the stuff that only auto-confirmed accounts can do? - Caribbean~H.Q. 21:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Register account. Return in a week. Easy street. Sceptre ^(talk) 21:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually its only 4 days. Mr.Z-man 21:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)I would support adding even a minimal edit count restriction on autoconfirm. This would cut down on sleeper socks used to edit semi-protected pages as well. Also of interest is a quick script I wrote to auto-revert pagemoves, User:Mr.Z-man/moverevert.js. It adds a "revert all" tab when viewing a move log. I'm still working on a version that will also delete the redirects created. Also, it isn't very tested (I used it once) but it should work. If you use it, make sure to turn off "Add pages I move to my watchlist" or your watchlist will look like this when you are done. Mr.Z-man 21:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess the hard way is to convince a developer to program a feature that would block any page move that involves "HAG" as part of the move, then again that seems like a lot of unneded work and we don't want to give him bragging rights for his stupidity, so what is left? - Caribbean~H.Q. 21:26, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I imagine that such a solution would have unintended negative side effects. I do support a minimum edit count before autoconfirming, though. —Travis^talk 21:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)Add a minimal edit count restriction for autoconfirm, we already have a titleblacklist Mr.Z-man 21:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but we should establish a solid number, not something that could be ignored by doing a few minor edits, so 250? 500? - Caribbean~H.Q. 21:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

That was proposed earlier for another form of semi protection to protect against sleeper vandalism-only accounts, at one time dubbed quasi protection. It was shot down originally due to wasting so much time since admins would have had to confirm each account. Then it was proposed again when the software was updated so that it would automatically be confirmed after x amount of edits. I don't think that proposal gained enough consensus for it to be implemented. hbdragon88 (talk) 22:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

(3xec)I bumped up the priority of SpamRegex request, which will enable us to blacklist things (like "HAGGER" and all its possible variants in one regex) just about wherever people can type them - page titles, move fields, edit summaries, log entries, usernames; you name it, it's blocked. All they have to do is install it, and Grawp's sunk. Sure he can keep being annoying, but we won't know it's him without the trademark "hagger" string, and where's the fun in that? Happy‑melon 21:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why new users should have to clock up an arbitrary, fixed number of edits before being allowed to move a page. My fourth ever edit, 15 minutes after registering, was a page move [18]. --RFBailey (talk) 22:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

What about a throttle then, 1 page move per minute till a user have 100 edits? Or some form of captcha for page moves for editors with under 100 edits. MBisanz ^talk 23:31, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Why not just limit moves to non-admins and non-flagged bots to 1 every 5 minutes? How often does any non-bot or non-admin really need to move a page...? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

300 seconds is a long time to wait. In November of 2006 for example I moved pages quite a bit faster than that, and for legitimate reasons. Maybe you meant 5 every 1 minute? — CharlotteWebb 23:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I've contacted Mike Godwin and asked for the release of Grawp's IP. I've yet to get a response but once I do we may be a step closer to getting his ISP to track him down in real life. Also it may be worth mentioning that a bugzilla request was made for an "extension spam regex" which would allow for the blacklisting of content in edit summaries. This request may have already gone through, as Grawp is now modifying the content of his edit summaries.--Urban Rose 02:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Mikey is a very busy guy, no need to bother him. It is already public knowledge that this twat is editing from various IPs in the 71.107.128.0/18 range (71.107.128.0 to 71.107.191.255), though there are probably others. — CharlotteWebb 03:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I think Grawp might use a botnet so tracing his IPs might just get a compromised computer. I read here once some vandal did that and I don't know if it was Grawp or not. William Ortiz (talk) 09:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you say why you think that? If need be, e-mail me to avoid WP:BEANS. Even if all we get is a zombie computer, it should be reported, so it can be cleaned out. Either way, we catch something. And if it is compromised by Grawp, checking the logs on there might give us more information about him. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me)(public computer) 11:49, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

And WP:FICT got moved to a Hagger title. Why are we sitting around doing nothing? We should, at the very least, move-protect all guidelines and policies - there's no earthly reason why they should be moved anyway. Sceptre ^(talk) 09:19, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Ryulong told me that a lot of the recent accounts were sleeper socks that were really old. By looking at them most haven't contributed for 3 months to a year. William Ortiz (talk) 09:30, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

We have everything under control. There is no need for alarm. El_C 09:42, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks H.A.L.! LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

WMF Logos

This is being cross-posted from Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions#WMF_Logos on request for greater visability. Images like Image:Wikimedia.png are non-free copyrighted images owned by the WMF that should only be used per FUR guidelines. I think we should comment their use out of all userpages that have them as fairuse overuse. This is because all page of wikipedia, including user pages, should be non-free compliant. While it may not be a legal problem directly, for all the sites that scrape our database, their violating the copyright when they republish a userpage with the logo. Also, someone could argue trademark dilution if the logo is slapped willy-nilly on every user page. Any objections to commenting them out?.

I object, largely on the basis that I see this as more paranoia than factually-driven. Has anyone from the Foundation voiced an opinion on the matter? EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The WMF position from the last time I raised this question (~6 months ago, if I recall correctly), is that they have no official position. Or to put it more plainly they have not granted any license or permission for any generic third party use of their copyrights and trademarks within or outside of Wikipedia. At the same time, they are aware of these uses and have not taken any explicit action to generically restrict or remove the unathorized use of their copyrights and trademarks within Wikipedia. (Though it is worth noting that they have removed a few specific examples of infringing uses in the past.) So you can read into that whatever you want. MBisanz is basically correct that in the absense of an authorizing license, all of these uses created by Wikipedians represent acts of copyright/trademark infringment both within Wikipedia and for reusers. However, the WMF is obviously in a position to snuff this out even without legal action, should they choose to do so. I've been advocating for an official WMF Logo use policy for nigh on 2 years now, but it seems little progress has been made. Personally, my feeling is that under the current situation they are plainly unfree and purely decorative uses of WMF logos should be restricted. Dragons flight (talk) 21:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Echoing Dragon flight, I just checked my userpage, I have 5 violating images on it, 4 just through using userboxes with copyrighted images. If you want to look at it another way, were the WMF to sue an outsider for using the logo as a trademark violation, the outsider user would have an easy time convincing people that the trademark was already diluted beyond repair through our overuse, so reallyyou could think of it that we're hurting the foundation by overusing them to this extent. MBisanz ^talk 21:56, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

• They are copyrighted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is (or includes) one of the official logos or designs used by the Wikimedia foundation or by one of its projects. Notwithstanding any other statements, this image has not been licensed under the GFDL. Use of the Wikimedia logo is subject to the Wikimedia visual identity guidelines and requires permission. NonvocalScream (talk) 21:31, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

EVula, I understand your concerns, but so far I haven't found a statement giving permission for re-use on en-wiki userpages. Could someone check OTRS-permissions? MBisanz ^talk 21:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to ask for permission. NonvocalScream (talk) 21:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The answer I get is... Officially no, it is up to the community how they police that. NonvocalScream (talk) 21:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Erm, if we don't have legal permission to use the logos, then I think we ought to err on the side of caution. I don't mind if their used on say a policy page or that sort of thing, but using it on welcome templates is to me, overuse, considering its not critical to see that logo to understand how to use WP or what the WMF is. MBisanz ^talk 21:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Just as above, officially, no permission. The community takes on the role of how they handle this. NonvocalScream (talk) 21:54, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I can't imagine the WMF suing Wikipedia... John Reaves 21:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

But what about About.com for scraping it with our userpages... MBisanz ^talk 21:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we should worry ourselves excessively over what other websites do; we have pathetically little influence over websites that aren't hosted by the Foundation. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I do think we should worry about distributing "free" content that is in fact unfree. That's the situtation we often create by embedding WMF logos in things. In my opinion, if the logo isn't actually important to the topic being discussed we would probably be better off to do without it. Dragons flight (talk) 22:09, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Dear folks, our trademark lawyers (outside counsel) advise us not to approve the use of our trademarks outside official Foundation activities or projects. There are good reasons for this -- one of them is the purpose of trademark law itself, which is to prevent marketplace confusion. Another is that we don't want a symbol of affiliation that might signal to litigious people that you're responsible for what we do, or that we're responsible for what you do. So, we're asking people not to use the trademarks (either the graphic or the word mark), although of course you can engage in "nominative fair use," aka "nominative use." (There's a good article on the subject on en.wiki.) 69.17.48.227 MikeGodwin (talk) 22:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

My opinion for a long time is that we shouldn't use these. If the WMF releases another logo with a free copyright license, we can use that. Until then, it's hypocritical for us to speak for free content while not walking the walk. (And, it's absurd that a screenshot of our main page has to be classified as nonfree.) Perhaps we can have a competition for a free Wikipedia logo? — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, to give some size to the issue, there are over 500 uses of the less popular WMF logo and over 500 of the WP globe logo, I suspect their placement on certain high use templates means the actual number is in the tens to hundreds of thousands. I took Mike's advice and looked at Nominative use. I'd say that by placing the logos on the Welcome tempaltes and on userboxen we run into problems relating to:

2. The user only uses so much of the mark as is necessary for the identification (e.g. the words but not the font or symbol)
3. The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder. This applies even if the nominative use is commercial, and the same test applies for metatags.

When we welcome a user, we are welcoming them as another user, not on behalf of WMF or the project it owns, Wikipedia. Also, in userboxes I don't think a logo is necessary to identify that I have a WMF issued global account. Carl brings up some good ideas, but I'd say that until we find some artistic talent, at least killing them off the Templates and userpages would be a good start. MBisanz ^talk 23:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I've put in a Bot request to this end at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MBisanzBot 2. MBisanz ^talk 07:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It's been debated time and time again. This is really a discussion for WP:NFC and not WP:AN. The basic gist is that we don't have a problem with using these copyrighted logos because we are using them for the operation of Wikipedia, and in limited fashion. WP:CVU used to have official logos, and those were removed. No big deal. If we need to evaluate some situations, ok, but a total ban for meta space is absurd and entirely unnecessary. -- Ned Scott 10:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Mike Godwin says, above, that we should treat these as fair use images. NFCC is clear that fair use images shouldn't be used except in namespace 0. I think that is a quite compelling argument for removing them from other namespaces. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:50, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Necessary - as the foundation fails to protect their copyright/trademark, it loses value and enforcability. WilyD 12:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism only accounts

Moved from WT:AIV to request wider input.

I am encountering more and more instances were vandals are being reported, and blocked, as "vandalism only accounts" when they have made a handful of edits. In many cases these accounts have not being properly warned. There seems to be a number of users and admin who have interpreted "vandalism only account" to include any account where all the edits are vandalism even if the total number of edits is only a handful, and consider this grounds circumventing the usual warning escalation process. Of course, the problem with this is that the initial contributions of almost every new vandal are all vandalism, so fall under the "vandalism only account" definition and the warning circumvention. It would be useful to get other opinions :on this. TigerShark (talk) 23:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Exactly an issue I see. Too many RC patrollers use descriptions such as "vandslism after final warning", "vandalism only account", and "vandalism directly after release of a block." Now, sometimes, this may be true, but it appears the current thought by RC patrollers is that using these sort of descriptions may automatically be blocked by admins. Giving false or misleading comments in an effort just to get a user/IP blocked, is serious. If it's true, I'm all for it. But if it's just an effort to get a block, then I'm against it. Steve Crossin (talk) (anon talk) 23:37, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

To expand on my response to TigerShark at their talkpage; sometimes there are factors that are not apparent in dry text. For instance, it is now the weekend - in the UK it is early Sunday morning and in the US it is late afternoon to mid evening. It is Saturday night and young people are getting on the internet and having fun, and some may be minded to vandalise a top 10 site which allows anonymous editing... a string of vandal edits across a diverse range of subjects (no non subject areas, just the articles) can be indicative of someone who is up for teh lulz only. Vandal fighters (reporters and admins alike) sometimes get a sense of who is editing with no intent to ever contributing usefully, and it can be frustrating to have to allow someone to prove beyond all doubt that they are only here to disrupt before acting. Do we (and I specifically mean the admins who act) ever get it wrong? Surely, yes, but hopefully we are right so much more often to have a big net gain to the encyclopedia.

That said, earlier I was declining most reports and my last block before this comment was to a school ip regarding vandalism that was some time ago... for 24 hours... it will have expired before school re-opens on Monday...

It ain't perfect - just like people. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:38, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I will look at the contribs and warnings of any account before I block it, regardless of what the RC patroller has written. However, I will happily also block accounts with only a few edits, and few warnings if it is clear that they are only here to vandalise. It's a balance. Black Kite 23:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree with Black Kite here - if an account has only caused vandalism, and they've had sufficient warning, I see no reason not to give an indefinite block. After all, if the user wants to contribute seriously at a future date, they can create a new account once the autoblock has expired. —  Tivedshambo  _(t/c) 07:23, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree too, because BlackKite mentions them having had some warnings. Don't get me wrong, if an account vandalises after a couple of warnings (including some form of final warning), then I would completely agree with a block (initially of 24 hours) - even if they had made only 3-4 edits. The issue is bypassing the warning escalation and the block escalation, by using the "vandalism only account" definition because those 3-4 edits were the account's only contributions. TigerShark (talk) 12:47, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments so far. Just to clarify, the issue I am raising here is that the warning escalation process is often being ignored because all of an account's edits are vandalism, even if it is only half a dozen in a short period of time. It is also correct that such accounts are getting indef blocked. There are good reasons why we have the escalation process for warnings and also for extending blocks for repeat offenders (rather than going straight to an indef block) - as pointed out above, an indef blocked user is only actually autoblocked for 24 hours anyway (vandal or otherwise). My main concern is that we seem to be significantly circumventing policy and usual practice by use of the "vandalism only account" definition. It would perhaps not be too bad if the definition covered the occassional account, but the issue here is that it seems to cover almost every single new vandal/test account because the first few edits by almost every new vandalism account are vandalism/tests. If we start blocking these without the usual warning escalation and start blocking them indefinitely, then we are pretty much doing that for every vandal account - which, I would suggest, is a very significant change to policy/practice - not one that I completely disagree with, but one that should be discussed. Looking forward to any further thoughts. Cheers TigerShark (talk) 12:47, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I personally will only block a user at AIV if: They've had a level 4 warning and continued to vandalize past that, OR it's an account (not an IP) that very clearly isn't here to help - repeated creation of nonsense/attack pages, long string of vandalism that goes faster than we can revert, etc. If they don't meet one of these two, I leave an {{AIV}} comment. I have, too, noticed that admins have been a little too trigger happy of late. Just today, an IP had been given only two real warnings and a "that was your third vandal edit, I'm reporting you" and was blocked. IP's definitely need at least three warnings before we block them, unless there's an extensive history of vandalism, which in this case the block log was empty. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 00:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I can attest to having seen this, too. I personally am pretty strict when reporting vandals, but I will rarely start at anything higher than a level two warning. I'll only start at a level three warning if there have been several instances of blatant vandalism that was reverted without warning, or if the vandalism is particularly serious. Only in extreme cases would I ever give an only warning. In fact, I've only ever done that with this user, who made a personal attack (against a person with an identity disclosed in the edit) that required oversight.

But what I'm getting at here is that I, for pretty much 99% of cases, follow warning escalation. This is, in my interpretation, the correct way to go about things. —  scetoaux (T|C) 01:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I remember from when I first became an admin, I followed the example of many other administrators who would indef-block a newly created account if their only edits were vandalism, and if they had been warned that what they were doing was wrong, and then continued. Lots of new users make testing edits... some make semi-innocuous ones, and others make more vandlism-like edits. Once they've made their first tests, though, and if they've been warned that you can't do that on Wikipedia, I remember pretty consistently seeing that if the behaviour continued, they would be indefinitly blocked. Perhaps we are not assuming good faith in them, but if someone truly makes a few first test edits that are vandalism, but wants to be a constrictive editor, conceptually they'd cease once they were warned about it. If not, they appear to just be there for disruption. What that meant to say, however, was that I learned that attitude by watching, whether or not it was actually the best way. Just some thoughts... I definitly think that this is an important issue that should be addressed, so that there is consistently, and so that we both stop disruptive editors from messing with Wikipedia and don't needlessly block those who could be productive contributors. -- Natalya 02:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

See, I'm one of the people who WILL report an IP if I warn them, check their contribs, and find nothing but vandalism. Here's my thinking: One, if a user comes in here to screw around without an account, and bops around from page to page for half-an-hour putting "Barney is TEH GAYYYY!!!!!11!!1!" and the like, I highly doubt that they're warming up their typing fingers for a nice long session of productive editing. Second: Blocks are preventative, yes? If it's RECENT vandalism (and yes, I'm sure that if you go back into my contribs you'll easily find instances where they weren't recent at all--I'll get to that in a minute) then the best way to stop them is a short block. Third: IMHO, it's probably BITE-ier to block a registered account than an IP, under these circumstances--IPs. after all, are much more transitory identifiers, and if a user screws up under one IP, he can always redeem himself, if he's so inclined, once his DHCP lease expires. A named account, though, will always carry that block. Finally--yes, there's an element of frustration here. I HAVE been known to report non-recent attacks, simply based on the following thought process: oh, here's an obvious vandal edit...warn...let's see what else they've been up to...ten other bad edits? WTF?? (clicks AIV bookmark). I try to keep that to a minimum, but as I'm sure everyone will wholeheartedly agree, vandal-fighting is tedious and frustrating. Sometimes, you vent a little...and in this case, by "you", I mean, "me". Done now....Gladys J Cortez 02:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

If you're so thick that you need multiple chances to understand that replacing a page with 'YOU'RE A FAGGOT!' is wrong, I don't want you here. HalfShadow (talk) 02:59, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It depends somewhat upon the type of vandalism. I rarely block at all, but yesterday I blocked as vandalism-only a site that had made 2 repeated serious BLP attack pages in 24 hours and nothing else. Sometime we need to send a very strong message. Usually , though we don't--we want to encourage people who are playing around--even playing around foolishly & harmfully as in the above example--to come back and work constructively. I check back on the accounts, ip or named, that I have sent serious warnings to, and very few of them have ever come back and done more damage. DGG (talk) 03:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Though I agree that we want to encourage the play-around-ers to come back and edit productively, the question that pops up in my skeptical little heart is "...but seriously, do you think they will?" To me, if you have sincerely good intentions, you're likely to start off in a manner that demonstrates them; if you start off in a joking, screw-around manner, the message you're sending is I don't take this place, or the work that's done here, seriously. And those are the users who concern me. (Is there, other than a slight reluctance to AGF, anything fundamentally flawed in this view?)Gladys J Cortez 03:09, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

While I certainly understand where you are coming from Gladys, I do tend to think that that is a flawed point of view. Any of us who have done vandalism patrol are obviously committed to this project and take it rather seriously. This makes it more difficult for us to consider the mindset of those who fall within that enormous universe of people who don't take it seriously for whatever reason. Such people might include a 14 year old who vandalizes for laughs with her friends; but who in a couple of years might be doing research for a high school project, learn something interesting that isn't on Wikipedia, and want to insert it. Or it might include two very smart friends I went out for drinks with last week, both highly educated professionals who are contemptuous of Wikipedia and might (for all I know) make nonsense anonymous edits when they are drunk late at night; but who might come around in the end and start contributing some of their considerable knowledge to the project.

Sure, there are a lot of vandals who will never be anything but that, but we should also remember that most of the rest of the world does not take Wikipedia so seriously and that that's hardly a sin. Rather than perma-blocking a new account after a few unhelpful edits, we would do better to take the high road by continually warning the user and blocking only after the last warning has been received, preferably for a short period of time. Who knows, maybe some of those folks will be impressed by the commitment so many have to the project—sometimes when reverting vandalism within seconds I can't help but think that the newbie vandal must be somewhat amazed at how quickly their damage was undone—and will feel some contrition after wrecking the work of others and only being met in response with relatively polite notes to stop their behavior. Even if only 1 in 100 reacts that way, and even if only half of those go on to make positive contributions, isn't that utterly worth it? We should be thinking of Wikipedia as a project that will last for 10, 20, or even 100 years, and in order to keep it going we will need a steady stream of new volunteers. Instead of thinking of new vandal users as bad folks trying to break the 'pedia (even though some of them will be that), it's better if we think of them as people who have come far enough to hit the "edit" button and who might be converted into productive editors. Indef blocking every new account that makes a few vandal edits or blocking IP's without giving them a final warning do not strike me as effective long-term strategies, and we lose very little (basically just time and a bit of extra effort) by being courteous and assuming good faith till we're practically blue in the face.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 05:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Bigtimepeace puts it very well. Unfortunately, it is also possible to go blue in the face trying to convince people who have the other attitude, best summed up by the comment further up in the thread: "If you're so thick [insert random vandal edit] I don't want you here." It is a misunderstanding of the many reasons people have for experimenting, and the wide range in ages, which impacts on the way they experiment. Also, many people experiment with the warnings, and test to see if they really will get blocked. That should be considered, though the best advice if you end up testing a new account to destruction, is to get a new one, and start off by admitting that you were editing under a previous account. Carcharoth (talk) 12:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The question of "to indef or not to indef" appears regularly at WT:AIV. the most recent such conversation is the three threads starting here: [19]. It might be worth a read for those interested in this topic. Part of that thread goes into "vandalism" vs. "test" edits; I agree that we should extend good faith in differentiating between the two. My comments below are for accounts that I judge to be "vandalism".

Indef blocking an account that has, so far, been used only for vandalism (as opposed to test edits), without the 4-level warning sequence, is by far the most efficient use of our time. Being blocked indef does not give you cancer, or prevent your graduation from college, or go in your "permanent record". It is not "unfair". It protects the encyclopedia. For the tiny (and it is tiny) percentage of people who want another chance, there's {{unblock}}, there's {{2ndchance}}, and there's the option of creating a new account when the autoblock expires. Read the mediawiki pages used for blocked accounts; it's extremely gentle and AGF'y.

Let's take Bigtimepeace's guesstimate; let's say 1 in 100 indef blocked users would have eventually contributed constructively. You have to balance that against the extra time it take editors to report, and admins to re-block, the other 99 vandals we've given a free second chance to. I find it hard to believe that there's someone out there who vandalizes several pages, and would have turned things around after a 4th warning or a short block, and yet still can't be bothered to request unblocking. In fact, that's the perfect way to identify that 1%: people who request unblocking, and are willing to jump thru the hoop of {{2ndchance}}. I suggest that everyone who is concerned that we are indef blocking potentially good contributers patrol the unblock request category, and hand out second chances to those you think are not a lost cause. But it makes no sense to to me to block an account that is 99% sure to be an unrepentant vandal for 24 hours, only to block them for longer next time. --barneca (talk) 14:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Former content of Wikipedia:Deletionpedia Patrol

I would like to request the content/code of Wikipedia:Deletionpedia Patrol which was created by a banned user, and was therefore deleted. Basketball110 ^{My story}/_{Tell me yours} 23:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

• Please see this discussion at ANI. Black Kite 23:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

If the goal is eventual recreation, maybe a WP:DRV describing how your version is different than the deleted version would be useful. MBisanz ^talk 00:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It was only deleted because it was made by a banned user, so DRV wouldn't be necessary for re-creation by a non-banned user. -- Ned Scott 10:49, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:AIV is down

Looks like the same problem that was happening at ANI. Page simply displays "WP:VANDAL". Baegis (talk) 04:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It looks like a Mediawiki problem, since no matter how far back I go, I get the same problem at both of them. Has someone hacked mediawiki or something??? --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:36, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind. Its fixed. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:36, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Its not MediaWiki, see this.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 04:37, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Would there be support for cascade-protecting the templates used on these high-profile pages? It would be as simple as regularly copying the text from each noticeboard to (say) Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Protection, which had cascading protection on. We could even get a bot to do it (although it'd have to be an adminbot so it could edit protected pages... <gulp> :S). A script could be programmed to detect when a page from illegal namespaces (to be conservative, anything outside Template: and Wikipedia:) were transcluded, and not do the update (to stop people trying to lock pages by transcluding them here). It would only have to run once an hour or even less. Happy‑melon 09:35, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism - Template has been moved

Resolved

 – Sceptre ^(talk) 09:29, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:US-painter-stub has been moved to Lucinda Bliss so now the template is a redirect to that page. This template is used on many pages which are all affected by this vandalism, and the original one needs to be restored. Thanks.  ‑ MANdARAX XAЯAbИAM  (talk)  09:23, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Sceptre ^(talk) 09:29, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

MedCab backlog

MedCab has a backlog of cases needing volunteer assistance (see Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal#Case list). It would be sincerely appreciated if a few people with dispute resolution experience would look over the list and adopt a case or two. If you're a little unsure about what to do, we offer some advice, including a list of editors with dispute resolution experience willing to help out. Thanks! Vassyana (talk) 12:50, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Can

Resolved

Someone close this Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jemmal as withdraw. As it seems I did not look hard enough. Or try alternative names for the search. Thanks. Vivio Testarossa^{Talk Who} 12:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I have closed the AFd as nomination withdrawn with nobody supporting deletion. Davewild (talk) 12:59, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Famous player sections

User: Fasach Nua began tagging the notable/famous player section of every national football team article as OR. As he began doing so, many editors, including myself, asked him to bring the issue to WT:FOOTY before an edit war spread across 50 articles. The discussion is ongoing as we attempt to develop a criteria for inclusion in these sections. In the mean time since these sections have existed uncontested on WP for several years, it is my position that they should remain untagged until the discussion at the project talk page has run its course and a consensus is reached. Rather than start an edit war over this I would appreciate a neutral 3rd party weighing in at either my or Fasach's talk page. -- Grant.Alpaugh 13:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Bad, bad loss

Newyorkbrad has gone, good luck to him. Davewild (talk) 14:08, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

• Please note that he has requested "that no explicit reference be made here or elsewhere to the incidents prompting [his] departure". Obviously it will be difficult to prevent this, but I think out of respect for him we should try our best to remind people not to post about what may have caused this. In case that sounds cryptic, nothing bad happened (as far as I know, it was events outside of his control), but I think it is safe to say that he wants to avoid drama over this, both for him and others. Carcharoth (talk) 14:23, 29 April 2008 (UTC)